Crittercism Transaction WP

8/11/2019 Crittercism Transaction WP

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Bernd HarzogAnalyst Virtualization and Cloud Performance Management

The Virtualization PracticeManaging Mobile Transaction Integrity


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2014 The Virtualization Practice. All Rights Reserved. All other marks are property of their respective owners. 2

Abstract

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are the fastest growing end user computing device

in the history of the world. It is predicted that in 2014 more users will interact and transact via their

mobile devices than through any other device. What this revolution implies is that for any business

that generates revenue online, whether through a web browser or a smartphone application,

ensuring the integrity and performance of these mobile transactions is of paramount importance.

This paper discusses potential problems that can arise with mobile transactions, and how

Crittercism addresses these issues.


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I. Growth of Mobile Commerce .............................................................................................4

II. What is a Mobile Transaction? .........................................................................................4

III. Why is Performance Management of Mobile Transactions Hard?.................................... 4

IV. Why Traditional (server-side) APM Companies Cannot Address

Mobile Transactions Well ............................................................................................... 5

V. The Crittercism Mobile Transaction Management Solution ...............................................7

VI. Summary and Conclusions .............................................................................................9

VII. About The Virtualization Practice .................................................................................. 9


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I. Growth of Mobile Commerce

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are the fastest growing end user computing

device in the history of the world, with 56% of the people in the world owning a smartphone.

50% of mobile phone users access their mobile phone as their primary way to browse the

Internet. 80% of the time that users spend on their smartphone is spent inside of apps.

According to the Federal Reserve, 48% of smartphone users have used mobile banking in

the last 12 months. Forbes has stated that 74% of smartphone users have used their phone

to help research a purchase with 74% of these making a purchase (which means that 58% of

smartphone users have used their phones to make a purchase.

Since a mobile app should deliver great end-user experience, and that user experience will

determine whether or not the app is chosen to perform a revenue generating transaction,

user experience and mobile revenue generation become joined at the hip.

As the end user community ips to smartphones and tablets as their preferred devices to

access the Internet and conduct online nancial and shopping transactions, understanding

how mobile transactions are performing will become more important than understanding the

performance of server side

Java transactions.

II. What is a Mobile Transaction?

Transactions are user interactions that lead to a business outcome. There are a variety of

transactions that occur on mobile devices. Examples include:

Check-out transaction in an ecommerce app: user logs in, searches for item, puts item in

shopping cart, checks-out

Buy/sell stock in a nancial services app

Order entry in an enterprise eld force app, where the employee enters an order to buy

or sell products

Each transaction is not as simple as it appears. Although a smooth experience makes

the process appear effortless, complex technology is involved where each transaction is

composed of multiple interactions. The success of each step determines the success of the

entire transaction.

III. Why is Performance Management of Mobile Transactions Difcult?

Ensuring the integrity and performance of mobile transactions is a difcult challenge for the

following reasons:

Transaction complexity: Each transaction is subject to many points of potential

failure. The transaction can span many mobile screens that the user interacts with.

The application itself or an application upon which the application is dependent could

crash or have an error. Any component in the transaction chain could experience a long

response time or latency and cause the transaction to be abandoned.


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Mobile complexity: Transactions are executed across a very diverse hardware and

software environment consisting of many different devices, many different networks,

many different OS versions, and many different supporting services. Thus, the metrics

that need to be collected in order to measure transaction integrity and performance are

numerous and diverse. They come from every layer of the environment including the

hardware, the system software, the applications and the network.

User interactions complexity:Transactions occur concurrently with many other

processes on the mobile device and many other potential user actions including other

background (but still running) applications, background system processes, and the user

switching the application which is processing the transaction in and out of the foreground

while the transaction is executing. Users can also change wireless coverage during

mobile transactions (WIFI -> cellular 3G -> cellular 4G), creating additional complexity in

tracking metrics across all connection mediums.

Mobile scale: The scale of mobile and mobile transactions is unlike any prior

technology. By the end of this year there will be 1.75B mobile devices, not to mention

the additional wearable and other connected devices. This requires the systems used

to ensure the integrity and performance of mobile transactions must accommodate

demands unlike prior solutions.

IV. Why Traditional (Server-Side) APM Companies Cannot Address MobileTransactions Well

The single most important attribute of server based APM as it pertains to this paper is that the

work that is being managed occurs on servers inside of the data centers owned or rented by

the enterprise that owns the revenue generating application. Server based APM is therefore

principally concerned with the back end operation of the application system and its interaction

with its supporting middleware and database services.

It is also the case that server based APM assumed a browser as the end user s client

application. Since relatively little of the work associated with the transaction occurs in the

browser, server based APM paid very little attention to the end user portion of the application

and the experience of the end user.

Mobile revenue generating applications are very different than their server based

counterparts. The principal source of the difference lies in the architecture of the application.

The client piece of the application (the part used by the end user) is now a full-edged

application installed on the mobile device, instead of a browser which executes only a limited

portion of the application.


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Mobile transaction management is about understanding the performance and operation of

each individual revenue generating transaction within a particular mobile application. It is

about understanding how multiple individual steps make up a compound transaction. These

steps consist of the complete cycle of activities which precede a transaction (like searching

for a good or service), the browsing of goods or services in a product catalog, the selection

of the desired product, the method of paying for the product, and the nal checkout and

conrmation process.

Optimizing the revenue stream from mobile apps and activities can only be done if visibility

into how individual revenue generating transactions are performing and operating. And when

they are not performing well, the diagnostics process needs to span the entire mobile device

(operating system and hardware) as well as the network supporting the device.

Compound (true business transactions) vs. Atomic (web service calls) Transactions

Server based APM solutions typically focus upon atomic transactions that are simply HTTP

calls or web service calls. Mobile transactions are comprised of many different atomic

transactions making them true compound transactions. For example, even for the nal

stage in an ecommerce purchasethe checkoutthere are often many screens andinteractions that must occur. These include conrming goods in the cart, determining a

shipping address, payment details, and nally the order conrmation.

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Therefore a true mobile transaction management solution must address compound

transactions which is outside of the scope of most server based APM solutions.

V. The Crittercism Mobile Transaction Management Solution

Every failed interaction (or mobile transaction) is not only a lost revenue opportunity, but

also a missed opportunity to engage with a customer. With integrated IT and businesstransaction metrics, mobile teams can use business context to optimize experience and

operations of mobile apps to improve their bottom line. Although a smooth experience

makes the process appear effortless, complex technology is involved where each

transaction is composed of multiple interactions. The success of each step determines the

success of the entire transaction.

Crittercism transaction management solution is the industry-rst solution optimized for mobile

and connected apps. The solution enables companies to dene, monitor and manage in real-

time the transactions that have the greatest impact on bottom-line growth. Using Crittercism,

mobile teams can:

Monitor Pinpoint the performance issue of the app and highlight revenue impact.

Prioritize Mobile teams can prioritize and focus their efforts on issues that truly affect

the company bottom line. For example, teams can focus on revenue-critical

transactions rather than on low-value errors.

Troubleshoot Identify root cause of issues from start to nish. Use diagnostics to pinpoint

checkout and service calls in

the transaction.

Trend Based on transaction metrics, identify ways to improve components of

the transaction.

Advantages of the Crittercism Solution

Built on Crittercisms highly scalable SaaS platform the new solution enables companies to

dene, monitor and manage in real-time the mobile transactions that have the greatest impact

on bottom-line growth. This feature set focuses upon the business implications of mobile

transaction performance including the breakthrough ability to calculate the revenue at risk for

each application, broken down by transaction.

The solution does this by integrating the complete set of mobile performance metrics such

as response time, errors, and crashes with the business context of start to nish business

transactions. Because the solution is built only for mobile, it is able to account for thecomplexity of mobile app interactions including app foregrounding/backgrounding and

network connectivity changes.


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Crittercism Transaction Management is a unique solution that is:

Mobile transaction optimized

Mobile user interaction optimized

Mobile performance optimized

Mobile scalable

Leveraging Crittercisms mAPM solution,troubleshoot mobile transactions downto the user ow level.

Use the Transactions Summary toquickly glance at mobile revenue atrisak and how key mobile businesstransactions are performing.


9/9 2014 Crittercism, Inc.

About Crittercism

Crittercism provides the worlds leading mobile application performance management (mAPM) solution and enables enterprises to accelerate

their mobile business. The companys solution monitors every aspect of mobile app performance and provides a real-time global view of app and

transaction metrics across iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, Hybrid and HTML5 apps. The companys investors include Google Ventures, Scale

Venture Partners, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, InterWest Partners and Accenture. Learn more at http://www.crittercism.com.

facebook.com/getcrittercism linkedin.com/company/crit [email protected]

VI. Summary and Conclusions

For any business that generates revenue from its mobile applications, understanding the

relationship between the performance and operation of the individual transactions is a

business critical issue. Poor transaction performance affects not only current generation of

revenue, but also long-term customer loyalty and retention.

VII. About The Virtualization Practice

The Virtualization Practice provides analysis, commentary and resources on current

Virtualization and Cloud Computing news, events, and community. We break virtualization

into topics, and feature a world class expert in that topic as the analyst for the topic. Topic

Analysts are responsible for writing original, objective, analytical posts in their area of

expertise, for writing and maintaining a white paper on their market and the vendors that

serve that market, and for assisting sponsoring vendors with marketing activities.

Bernd Harzog is an Analyst for Cloud and Virtualization Performance Management. Bernd

is also the CEO of APM Experts, a consulting and analysis rm focusing upon this market,

vendor strategies in this market and customer use cases in this market. Bernd was formerly

a Gartner Group Research Director focusing upon the Windows Server operating system,

CEO of RTO Software, VP of Products of Netuitive and has been involved in vendor and IT

strategy since 1980.

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Crittercism Transaction WP