NetworkWorld’s Denise Dubie began her discussion on application performance with, “Like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, optimal application performance is in the experience of the end user. It’s a subjective matter that can bewilder network managers trying to ensure every app performs as its end users expect.”
“And while the process of determining what optimal application performance is can be ambiguous, it is crystal clear when the goal has not been met and end users are complaining about slow service and non-responsive applications.“
Assessing VoIP call quality offers a great example of user subjectivity. A user making a call from a factory floor may tolerate lower quality than a user making a call from a conference room. This is not to say that you can’t optimize application performance. It’s to say that acceptable application performance, such as VoIP performance, may vary between locations. Every environment is unique and understanding it and user expectations are key for ensuring successful application deployment.
According to Charles Thompson, manager of systems engineering for Network Instruments, “network managers need to baseline that normal behavior of applications in their environment and determine the response times end users expect from their applications. What end users can live with in terms of application performance can sometimes be more realistic than what network managers assume.”
“There are thresholds that one organization would consider bad, but that might be perfectly suited for another organization,” Thompson says. “Network managers need to look at the deviations from what is considered normal in their organization and not set expectations that might not apply to every application.”
Read more on managing application performance.
Tags: application analysis, application performance, Denise Dubie, optimizing application
