Leveraging The Combined Power Of Synthetic And Real-User Monitoring

It’s easy enough to divide digital management strategies into two broad categories, namely application management and log management. However, most businesses use elements of both because of the powerful synergistic effects. Likewise, application monitoring, taken separately, also can be divided into two general categories: synthetic (SM) and real-user-monitoring (RUM).

Know the Essential Differences

At the heart of user-monitoring, RUM and synthetic methods are both essential tools but come with inherent differences. Automatic tests, not based on real user activity, are the building blocks of SM. In a way, RUM is the complete opposite because it follows actual users to discover how they interact with a website.

Understand How Log Data Supports APM

If your goal is to conduct the most precise, effective, and relevant performance monitoring possible, you’ll need accurate log data to get the job done. That means employing a capable log analysis, aggregation, storage, and enrichment tool suited for your organization’s digital environment. Logs, when all goes well, allow your team to gain keen insight into how well a given application is performing. So, logging can be looked at as one of the early steps in the monitoring cycle, even though it serves numerous other functions all on its own, nor is logged data the only way to create app metrics that aid in the general monitoring process.

Use SM and RUM Together for Maximum Effect

Using just one kind of monitoring is far less desirable than using both. It’s not just the concept of synergy that makes the dual approach the best way to proceed. In fact, each type of monitoring lacks key areas of functionality that the other offers. That’s because each one has its own special category of metrics that it tracks (or traces). So, if you want to be fully aware of how well a given website functions, it’s best to use both approaches. For instance, the following lists of specific RUM and synthetic benefits are available to any team that employs both forms of APM.

SM Offers Unique Advantages

What can teams do when they take and active approach and conduct synthetic measurements? First, this approach allows you to repair all sorts of problems and test specific kinds of transactions. Additionally, synthetic techniques are an ideal way to test any changes you wish to implement and see whether they do what they should during the staging phase. What are the key benefits? That question is best answered by looking at the kinds of things SM looks at:

• Shopping cart functionality
• Speed of specific pages
• Amount of downtime in a given period
• How well the search function performs
• Whether the sign-up process works as it should
• How registration works for new users’ accounts

How RUM Enhances Performance

RUM delivers dozens of benefits, of course depending on the particular organization and environment. However, there are three core features of most real user apps, namely being able to discover which devices people are using to interact with your site, the ability to observe performance of pages and traffic flow, and gaining an understanding of location-based behavior. What are some of the most common reasons IT teams use RUM solutions? Most IT teams learn the following from the techniques:

• The types of devices people use to access the website
• The overall functionality of the browser
• The precise number of page views during a given period
• Specific numerical data about bounce rates in any time frame
• Whether the site can be accessed from many different geographical areas
• The amount of time it takes various pages to fully load

Using both of these powerful tools together delivers a comprehensive menu of functionality that allows IT teams to gain numerous insights into how well their sites perform.