On the Edge

Just as performance management tools can help organizations cope with complex legacy systems, the products and services can also benefit organizations that rely on cutting-edge Web technologies such as Web services. Performance management tools are a requirement for systems that use advanced Web technologies, says Jim Struve, assistant manager of information support services at WEA Trust, a Madison, Wisc.-based nonprofit organization that provides insurance and retirement services to Wisconsin public school employees.

WEA Trust has built its Web-based customer service system on Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino and IBM WebSphere products. A key element within the environment is Java Virtual Machine (JVM) technology, which Sturve says is particularly difficult to monitor and troubleshoot. That’s because JVM software often presents no overt trouble signs until a problem becomes critical. WEA Trust’s Web system runs several JVM applications simultaneously. "A server could be running, and the other JVMs could be running, but one could be dead, and we wouldn’t know it," he says. WEA Trust uses Dirig software to monitor its Web system and some of its JVM applications. "The Dirig tool is able to alert us when one of those JVMs goes under," says Struve. "This proactively makes sure that our Web presence is up and available."

Evaluating ROI

Measuring a performance management tool’s ROI is difficult. Unlike the previous generation performance monitors, which were developed to help enterprises tweak component performance, the new technology is primarily designed to boost one of the Web’s great intangibles?end user satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean performance management tools can’t exert a positive effect on an enterprise’s bottom line. A retailer, for example, may be able to attribute increased sales to improved website performance or decreased downtime. Likewise, banks, newspapers and other service-oriented organizations could credit higher user retention rates to the positive effects of a performance management tool, although other technologies and business practices can also affect user satisfaction and system reliability levels.

The technology, by pinpointing and, in some cases, fixing problems, also offers the potential to trim IT personnel expenses. "It’s possible to eliminate people hired to troubleshoot applications," says WEA Trust’s Struve. (Though Struve notes that he hasn’t cut any positions.)

Trouble Ahead

Considering the complexity of monitoring an entire Web-based application infrastructure and the various ways the task can be approached, it’s not surprising that many CIOs have trouble implementing performance management tools. "There’s a fair amount of integration work that you need to do in order to tie together all of those different agents collecting event information," says AMR’s Gaughan.