“Thanks to the simulation of user interactions with our systems, we can guarantee high levels of service for our desktop-centric solution.”

Nerdio needed to measure latencies and end-to-end client performance from the user’s perspective. Alyvix helps them simulate user operations in common applications, enabling Nerdio to quickly identify any performance problems and fix them before Nerdio's customers encounter them.

Nerdio Inc.

Vadim Vladimirskiy, CEO, Nerdio Inc.

Amol Dalvi, VP, Product, Nerdio Inc.

Managing the Cloud: End-to-End Monitoring with Alyvix

Founded in 2005, Nerdio is a US technology pioneer offering its customers cloud IT services through the Nerdio solution – Windows desktops used via the Internet. Only when the user experience with the cloud is comparable to that of a traditional PC can this business concept achieve success. Thus measuring these performance metrics is critical to retaining customers.

Nerdio needed to measure latencies and end-to-end client performance from the user’s perspective. Alyvix helps them simulate user operations in applications such as Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, helping to quickly identify any performance problems before Nerdio's customers encounter them. It also helps Nerdio achieve guaranteed service levels, with demonstrable data that can be visualized graphically by customers.

“Using traditional monitoring systems, it's practically impossible to check the perceptions that real users have of system performance. With Alyvix instead, we succeeded in obtaining significant data for helping assess the satisfaction of our customers. Thanks to the simulation of user interactions with our systems, we can guarantee high levels of service for our desktop-centric solution.” Vadim Vladimirskiy, CEO, Nerdio Inc.

An In-depth Technical Interview

Amol Dalvi, Senior Director of Product at Nerdio, explains more about end user monitoring in an interview with IT Briefcase:

What is visual monitoring?

Visual monitoring is a type of IT performance testing that uses robotic agents to simulate the real user’s interaction with a website or application, and then presents the data in a useful visual way. This includes mimicking the real user’s journey in navigating those websites and applications. The overall performance of websites and applications are largely determined by bottlenecks in processes along the way, which can exist across a variety of components, devices, and networks. Testing the end-user experience is essential in getting full visibility into the network, and determining if there are any performance issues that will impact the user’s ability to work.

Why is visual monitoring important and necessary?

Many people are familiar with the idea of performance monitoring for IT, but the increasingly complex nature of today’s IT infrastructures have made traditional monitoring inadequate. It used to be that back-end metrics alone could measure if the quality of service was being delivered to end users. Today, however, we need much more sophisticated analytics and tools to stay on top of and ahead of performance issues, and ensure end-user satisfaction.

How exactly does visual monitoring work?

It involves simulating multi-step user actions using different browsers and from different locations, and running these tests on a regular basis (say, hourly). IT administrators thus have a regular report about the average latency and response times for each type of service, as well as the trends over time.

For instance, Nerdio’s visual monitoring tool tests eight key dimensions of the user experience: logging in to a desktop, visiting a website on Internet Explorer, visiting a website using Google Chrome, sending an email via Outlook, opening a Word document, opening an Excel document, opening a PowerPoint document, and opening a PDF document. IT administrators can customize thresholds for each of these tests to specify when the service quality should be considered good, fair, or poor.

How does visual monitoring help IT teams deliver better end-user-performance?

Because the tests are performed at regular intervals, this type of monitoring helps IT admins pinpoint any service issues before they escalate and potentially cause major problems. Instead of waiting for help desk calls or tickets submitted to the support team from the end users, IT teams can be proactive in addressing and preventing problems before they get out of hand.

How can visual monitoring help organizations optimize their IT resources?

A big advantage of this type of monitoring is that organizations can create new and informative data points to inform resource allocation and usage, based on real user trends. For example, you may start to notice patterns like performance slowing down at a certain time of day, and in turn boost your compute resources during those hours to help your team work more effectively. In addition, this type of comprehensive monitoring empowers organizations to ensure that they are indeed receiving the quality of service promised by vendors.