Troubleshooting SaaS performance issues
Traditional network troubleshooting tools and processes were developed around the hub-and-spoke concept, with remote applications the spokes into servers in a centralized data center. But Saas applications that are delivered from an off-site provider’s data center defy traditional monitoring assumptions and require a new methodology for troubleshooting.
Challenges of troubleshooting SaaS performance issues
While network operations personnel have local visibility and control of applications deployed from within the enterprise, they are much more limited in SaaS applications served “from the cloud.” In particular, it’s difficult with traditional tools to distinguish SaaS traffic from other Internet usage going in and out of remote sites. IT personnel do not have local ability to determine whether the service is up and running or if the business user has straight connectivity to his or her hosted application. And while deep packet inspection (dpi) can deliver this level of granularity, this technology is costly to deploy across the distributed enterprise -- where most remote sites have direct Internet access.
Ultimately the challenge for an IT organization is that their end users aren’t going to call the SaaS provider if they have performance issues; they’re going to call the IT support desk.
Before support personnel relay the problem to the SaaS provider, they first need to perform the due diligence on their end to see if there’s anything in the enterprise affecting the SaaS application. For example, it could be a legitimate issue with Saleforce.com availability, for which IT personnel need verification to invoke the provider service-level agreement (SLA). Or the sluggishness could be the result of contention for the Internet.
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The Large Enterprise is
The Large Enterprise is definitely looking for new generation solutions to troubleshoot SaaS applications-In New York last week at InterOp, this was what all my clients were looking for - well done article and great insight -
Bob Berry
What is interesting to me is
What is interesting to me is that so many SAAS vendors do not shine a light on this issue with their clients. Of course, application uptime and responsiveness is important, but additionally, we have to look at the client side.While most vendors appear to have their technical requirements documented, many do not keep this documentation up-to-date, nor do they build a team with client IT organizations to make sure that the requirements are understood. Even a base-line audit to identify obvious problems can be a huge "stitch-in-time" win.
Once upon a time, all web based applications were just simple forms, and as long as a browser supported tables and Javascript mouseOver commands, that was good enough. However, many current SAAS applications require significant client-side processing power, and are expected to respond like desktop applications even as data is moving from the user to the vendor, and good network environments, minimal interference from intermediary devices, and fast, up-to-date systems are a requirement for good performance.
Once end-users are complaining, that means the problem has gone on way too long; good, proactive support helps everyone. SAAS vendors must be transparent about their internal performance, but must also work with clients to ensure that the end-user environment will allow the best possible experience in the application.
-B