how to guide: user experience

5www.information-age.com www.networksfirst.com

A measure of experienceDelivering a high quality user experience is arguably the network’s most important role, and it demands an empirical approach

“FOR the user, the experience iseverything,” wrote IT analyst groupQuoCirca in a recent report on userexperience monitoring. “The experienceusers receive when accessing IT applicationsis critical to the effectiveness of manybusiness processes.”

Those comments establish what is at stakein managing the nework to ensure userexperience – the ability of employees to dotheir job, and for the organisation to fulfil itsbusiness processes. For this reason, end-userexperience should be the metric by whichnetwork management is measured, and thebasis on which investments in networkmanagement should be justified. And toguarantee that the network is doing the jobthat is required of it, user experience shouldbe measured and managed explicitly.

The value of the user’s experience consistsof a number of factors. Firstly, networkdowntime, when a network is altogetherunavailable, obviously impairs employeeproductivity by preventing them fromaccessing business systems. Degradation ofnetwork performance can have the sameeffect, either by slowing employees down

or by rendering business applicationsentirely unusable.

The economic impact of these end-userexperience impairments will depend on thenature of the business, but common issuesinclude reduced sales when salespeoplecannot transact deals and an increasedburden on the IT support function.

Other adverse effects of poor userexperience can be more abstract, but noless real. For example, unresponsive systemscan be stressful for employees. They canalso cause loss of reputation, especially ifthey are customer-facing systems.

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how to guide: user experience

6 www.information-age.com www.networksfirst.com

METHODS OF MEASUREMENTWhat is not measured cannot be managed,and maintaining user experience demandsstatistical measurement.

One way to do this is throughinfrastructure level monitoring. This simplymeasures the response times betweennetwork components – the server, the clientand the nodes of the network in between.This allows the organisation to detect notonly when user experience issues occur, butalso where in the network they originate.

Another method is to simulate usertransactions. For an e-commerce site, forexample, a system wouldsimulate user behaviour,measuring response timesand website performanceas it goes along.

A third, moretechnically complex,approach is to placemarkers in applicationtransactions. This allowsthe flow of packets related to a givenapplication to be traced through thenetwork, highlighting application-specificbottlenecks. It is a technique that requirescertain software development skills, but itcan be used to monitor the performance of not only the network but also theapplication servers themselves. (What at

first appear to be network-related issuesmay in fact be application problems.)

A fourth way is to track end-userperception, whether by analysing calls to thesupport desk or through surveys. This is animportant component of IT servicemanagement and many organisations willhave this capability in place already.

However, end-user perception is alagging indicator of network performance,and is of limited value when it comes todiagnosing problems. Taking a proactiveapproach saves time and money. A recent

study by analyst companythe Aberdeen Group foundthat sophisticated adoptersof end-user experiencemonitoring identified 53%of application issues beforethere was a user complaint,compared with 39% amongaverage companies.

In the past, IT or networkmanagers may have felt thatthey knew their networks

well enough not to need a system that tellsthem when something is going wrong. But inthe client-server era, the flow of trafficthrough the network was predictable. Today,virtual environments and mobile devicesmake traffic flows highly unpredictable,meaning that an empirical approach to userexperience management is essential.

The flexibility ofvirtual environments

and the increasingsophistication of

mobile devices maketraffic flows highly

unpredictable

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