wp improving through integrated testing

wp improving through integrated testing - Transcript

IDC

ANALYST

CONNECTION

Melinda Carol Ballou Program Director Application Life Cycle Management

Improving Web Performance Through Integrated Testing
October 2009
Organizations are increasingly running business critical software and applications over the Web Web applications as well as the underlying technology infrastructure are becoming more and more complex Global sourcing application components and content that exist both inside and outside the firewall third party services and fierce competition make testing software and applications more critical Organizations can no longer afford to have system failures or performance degradation Consequently organizations need to take a holistic approach to testing and application performance management The following questions were posed by Gomez to Melinda Carol Ballou program director for IDC s Application Life Cycle Management practice on behalf of Gomez s customers Q A What are the key industry trends impacting Web application performance testing initiatives The complexity of technology used to deliver Web applications has evolved significantly Similarly the complexity of application development sourcing has also evolved For example there is increasing adoption of virtual machines software as a service cloud computing Web 2 0 applications rich Internet technologies multiple browsers third party components and services and open source code All this complexity means that there is a commensurate need for effective performance management and quality management In today s world organizations have ever fewer resources to execute and manage their quality initiatives so they need to prioritize their initiatives in key ways Problems are evolving and occurring across the entire Web application delivery chain both inside and outside the firewall and across a complex chain of sourcing Applications are becoming more and more composite with application services and content coming from many sources assembled within the end user s browser Therefore organizations are held responsible by end users for the quality of content sourced both externally e g via content delivery networks CDNs or partners and internally We also see organizational changes Web performance testing has traditionally been handled within a quality silo which is evolving into cross functional partnerships among quality assurance development lines of business and IT operations

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As a result there needs to be a well coordinated end to end life cycle approach from development to deployment release and provisioning Stakeholders including marketing ebusiness and line of business managers who traditionally were not familiar with performance testing understand the importance of testing from the end user perspective The success of their ebusiness initiatives depends on ensuring that applications can handle spikes in traffic due to marketing promotions and seasonal holiday shopping And quality Web experiences must be delivered to all end users whether they are in New York Los Angeles or Tampa or anywhere their customers are Realistic testing under load mitigates the risk of lost revenue and damage to the brand Q A What is the connection between Web performance testing and the bottom line In this competitive economy there is little leeway for failure Organizations face immediate competition that is just a mouse click away meaning poor Web performance is more costly than ever The impact on brand revenue and cost is much more of an issue for organizations today than it was even two years ago simply because performance has business critical implications Every dollar of revenue needs to be protected organizations can t afford to have their customers click over to the competition or post barbs on social networking sites Web performance testing can help ensure the success of critical ebusiness initiatives It is commonly used to help mitigate the risks associated with new application launches increased traffic due to seasonal spikes and marketing promotions and new infrastructure deployments We also see that the alignment of business with IT operations is critical about 80 90 of expenditures goes to operational IT infrastructure costs It s all the more important that organizations come up with effective approaches to their deployment release and provisioning strategies Organizations need to coordinate business and operations decisions to make more effective choices regarding the use of virtual machine and physical infrastructure and then manage performance of those components effectively These approaches can be critical to protecting the bottom line Q A How is Web application testing changing to keep pace with the challenges of Web 2 0 architectures third party content and services and rich Internet applications You need to consider multiple factors as you build the right strategies for your organization from an application testing perspective Testing from the outside in across the entire Web application delivery chain is becoming increasingly important to find the root cause of problems across all internal and third party components Remember earlier we talked about how applications are becoming more composite Applications are composed of many Web services such as shopping carts ratings and reviews and ad servers and content is often sourced from CDNs All of these services and content come together only in one place the end user s browser Problems can occur anywhere along this complicated Web application delivery chain Therefore testing strategies that measure performance from the end user perspective are being deployed to address the challenges of today s Web applications A realistic testing methodology to accurately reflect real end user behavior e g end user location key transactions browser or mobile devices used etc is needed to get as close to the customer experience as possible Testing your applications the same way that real end user interacts with them will help eliminate false positives and determine why and when the end user experience degrades It s not particularly helpful to know that there is a problem if
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you don t know where it is and what caused it Being able to analyze problems effectively understand their origin and then fix them efficiently saves time and can potentially save significant costs as well In addition it s important to incorporate a geographical testing perspective into your strategy to ensure that you will deliver quality experience across all users and regions Generating load and measuring response time from thousands of last mile locations worldwide will prevent costly issues from surfacing post launch In a global economy with dispersed application components and users much better coordination and testing are needed because poor performance just can t be tolerated Q A How can today s on demand solutions enable greater application life cycle management ALM agility Web performance testing should be a standard cyclical stage within existing processes for the application life cycle Typically in the past we ve seen siloed approaches to ALM someone handled requirements someone managed design someone built the code and someone handled change management and version control Increasingly what s needed is a more agile and coordinated approach to creating applications as well as managing the entire application life cycle New SaaS on demand approaches make load testing more immediately accessible without the long time frames or resource drains involved with hardware or software deployment The decapitalization and vendor flexibility benefits are critical as well Testing can be done without investing in large and expensive test beds and software Now load testing can be much more aligned with critical events such as new launches of software new infrastructure and new marketing campaigns This can help enable business agility as well as agile approaches to development and improved quality earlier in the life cycle Finding problems and fixing them earlier in the life cycle can cut costs significantly Integrating Web performance testing and production monitoring strategy in order to reuse the same scripts for testing and monitoring further drives agility This can help ensure a successful hand off between development and operations and also reduce operational costs It s really helpful if the components of ALM are integrated with one another and if the activities among them are well coordinated This will give organizations the ability to deliver applications more quickly which in turn will enable them to compete more effectively in this difficult global economy Q A What are the benefits of integrating Web performance testing into your processes and ebusiness initiatives One of the benefits is helping to protect and even increase online revenue by preventing downtime for critical systems Another related benefit of preventing downtime is preserving the reputation of the company Web performance testing also can reduce operational costs because there can be improved understanding of how to deliver provision and release applications and manage the infrastructure in ways that are best optimized to benefit performance Also customer satisfaction and loyalty can increase when the software and applications the main way users interface with the business are working well and when they can be tailored quickly to meet customer needs In effect such business agility can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty

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In addition the business is more effective Integrating Web performance testing with operational and transactional processes can streamline and improve overall quality increase customer responsiveness and facilitate effective ebusiness initiatives

ABOUT

THIS

ANALYST

Melinda Carol Ballou serves as program director for IDC s Application Life Cycle Management and Executive Strategies research In this role Ms Ballou provides thought leadership expert opinion research and analysis through comprehensive research on application life cycle management ALM and IT portfolio management with a specific focus on software life cycle process configuration and management software quality and IT governance software

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This publication was produced by IDC Go to Market Services The opinion analysis and research results presented herein are drawn from more detailed research and analysis independently conducted and published by IDC unless specific vendor sponsorship is noted IDC Go to Market Services makes IDC content available in a wide range of formats for distribution by various companies A license to distribute IDC content does not imply endorsement of or opinion about the licensee
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