CA’s Wily Technology division will ship Friday an update to its Customer Experience Manager (CEM) product that provides new troubleshooting tools, the ability to generate simulated end-user transactions, and “out-of-the-box” integration with CA Service Desk.
CEM is Wily’s customer application diagnostics package for finding and curing bottlenecks in users’ interactions with Web-based applications. (CA purchased Wily in 2006 for $375 million.)
The package, which is sold as a standalone “appliance,” monitors application performance from the end user’s point of view.
“CEM is focused on the end user experience, looking at the end-to-end response time [of an application],” Issac Roth, director of product management for Wily’s CEM product line told internetnews.com.
The latest version, CEM 4.0, now stores the page content for all poor performing transactions, making it possible to replay a performance or logic problem after the fact, Roth said.
That’s important, according to one analyst.
“Now, I can sift through a recorded version [of the user’s transaction],” Julie Craig, senior analyst at researcher Enterprise Management Associates, told internetnews.com. “A help desk person can look at exactly what is going back and forth that is causing the problem.”
Additionally, the package’s integration with CA Service Desk enables CEM 4.0 to automatically generate Service Desk trouble-tickets once a specified threshold of failed transactions has been exceeded.
“You can prioritize alerts depending on how many users are affected and send an alert in to Service Desk,” said Craig. “That ability to alert the staff that it needs to jump on a problem is a real differentiator [for CEM 4.0],” she added.
Another new feature provides support for simulated transactions, giving staffers the ability to carry out performance testing outside normal hours but with real-world conditions. CEM 4.0 also adds the ability to monitor and report performance metrics for Web services-based transactions.
“It gives you the opportunity to be proactive and watch for trends,” Roth said.
Initially designed to work with Java-based systems, Wily recently expanded the product to support systems that use Microsoft’s .NET Web services technologies as well. The package also works with Web-based applications from major vendors, including Siebel, Oracle, and SAP.
CEM 4.0 is sold as an “appliance” that attaches to a mirrored switch port or a network tap in the datacenter. It starts at $58,000 with a license that supports 100 concurrent HTTP sessions, Roth said.