Pricey e-Commerce Testing Software

Agilent Technologies' Firehunter/e-Commerce software enables ISPs to check e-commerce network performance, which, in turn, enables ISPs to write realistic SLAs.

by Wayne Kawamoto [May 18, 2000]

Agilent Technologies recently introduced its Firehunter/e-Commerce, a solution that lets ISPs continuously monitor the performance of an entire e-commerce infrastructure.

According to Agilent, Firehunter/e-Commerce provides comprehensive measurements that let ISPs establish verifiable business-oriented service level assurance (SLA) agreements with e-commerce vendors. The software is supposed to track real-time SLA compliance, identify potential problems within an infrastructure, alert the appropriate people and systems, and trigger applications that can correct problems.

Agilent says that its Firehunter/e-Commerce uses synthetic transactions that repeatedly test both the user's experience with the commerce application and component operations that ISPs do not control; for example, catalog look-up, and credit verification.

Also, Firehunter/e-Commerce lets Web-business managers obtain independent corroboration of real-time performance in business terms, for example, approved sales rates in dollars per minute, payment service errors, or item sold rate, with performance baselines and alerting thresholds.

The company claims that Firehunter/e-Commerce couples real-time transaction monitoring with an ability to "drill-down" and isolate problems. Furthermore, the system combines the end-user-experience and infrastructure-performance views with near-real-time business performance measurements to offer a picture of e-commerce service health. This can let ISPs negotiate realistic SLAs with co-service providers and provide end-to-end service guarantees to business customers. Managers can also use the system to establish norms for types of activities at specific times of a day — for example, typical income or how many items are sold per minute between noon and 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday — and then compare current performance against baselines and evaluate trends.

"Consumer patience with delay on e-commerce sites can be measured in seconds," says Tom White, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Communications Solutions Group. "Firehunter/e-Commerce allows ISPs to locate and fix infrastructure problems quickly. ISPs can now offer SLAs that differentiate them from competitors, and they can demand the same high-quality service from others."

Pricing and Availability
Agilent Firehunter/e-Commerce is available now, and pricing starts at $20,000.

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