Performance monitoring broadens for streaming media
As streaming video and audio become more common on retail web sites, Keynote Systems Inc. has broadened its site monitoring services to cover Macromedia Flash video as well as other forms of streaming media.
The expanded service serves a growing need to monitor rich media separately from other web site operations, says Dan Rayburn, executive vice president of researchers and publishers Streaming Media Inc. “It’s great to monitor your web site, but what if people can get to your web site but can’t get to your rich media?” he says. “It’s becoming more important to be able to monitor how long it takes for customers to get streaming audio or video and the quality of the playback.”
Eric Peterson, analyst at Jupiter Research, adds that monitoring rich media performance is important to maintain a consistent shopping experience for customers. “If you’re using streaming media, you don’t want to do it in such a way to degrade the customer experience you’ve already built,” he says.
In addition to monitoring Macromedia Flash video, Keynote’s Streaming Perspective 4.0 service monitors Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media, RealNetworks Inc.’s RealMedia, Apple Computer Inc.’s Quicktime and America Online Inc.’s Nullsoft Video.
Rayburn says StreamGuard.net also monitors the performance of several rich media formats to show whether they’re loading.
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