'Net Features : applications

Infrastructure Interplay/Correlation, Key to Performance Tuning

Administrator — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:30:00 GMT

:: By Steve Francis, LogicMonitor ::

Detecting issues early, before they impact your systems, is the key to performance tuning, but it’s impossible to achieve without constant monitoring and insight into your operating environment. However, finding and implementing a monitoring tool that provides the right information can be a difficult task.

Most issues are buried deep in complex interactions between applications, networks, servers and other infrastructure components and it’s difficult to find a monitoring tool that is compatible with all of those devices without adding additional complexity to the environment. Many of the available tools are limited, as they are too narrowly focused on the type of infrastructure they can monitor, or the data they gather is too shallow. To optimize performance you need a monitoring tool that provides broad insight into multiple systems and correlates data in a single interface. Viewing part of the system provides an incomplete picture of the truth. You need the different points of view but you also need to know how all tie together.

This issue becomes even more complex when you have IT responsibilities dispersed throughout the organization. As an example, database, network and storage may all be managed by individual groups in some companies – even in different locations. Each function may also have separate monitoring systems. Thus, the metrics in a single system may fail to show the root cause of a problem. Without cross-team communication, issues may be investigated in a silo with each team focused on optimizing their individual problem rather than optimizing for business alignment.

A monitoring tool should allow you in-depth insight into all your systems in one place. Without this transparency you can expend unnecessary resources trying to determine the root cause of an issue. Let’s say you are running a database server on top of VMware. Your database server may suddenly run at 100 percent CPU for no apparent reason. Your application or database team may then spend an hour trying to figure out what has changed. In reality, nothing has changed – but another team may be doing stress testing on another virtual machine sharing the same resources, stealing CPU from the database. Each business unit sees a point of view but lacks a complete view of the entire system.

In today’s business environment there is a renewed focus on big data and metrics. However, when it comes to monitoring, pure performance metrics may not tell the whole story. For example, slowing may be normal during peak usage, or it may indicate the start of a problem - straight performance metrics that give you the data without correlating it to other factors do not provide insight into which is occurring. However, a graph of database queries processed per percent of CPU consumed would immediately show whether changes in CPU load are due to changes in workload, or available virtual resources, or code changes.

The right network monitoring system can drive transparency and efficiency. Organizations should look for a system that offers dynamic device discovery, automated configuration, continuous scanning, self-correction, custom alerts, and powerful analytics. One of the most important features, however, is automation. While there is a great move to automate process, automation in monitoring not only yields efficiency but access to insights that can drive business decision.

Many organizations do not even realize that you can have a monitoring system that automates the roll-up and presentation of data. For example, you may have different business units that work across different systems. You have multiple storage arrays that are used by the multiple departments that are themselves geographically distributed. In this environment it would not be easy to get a report on how much storage is spread across the organization, and attributable to each department. A monitoring system that automates customized flexible graphing would easily generate this report. In addition if you added another storage array in any location, the reports would automatically update as well.

IT infrastructures are becoming increasingly complex, heightening the need for transparency and communication. Access to the right intelligence can drive optimal performance by fine tuning operations, troubleshooting issues, and proactively resolving problems before they impact the business. There must be a singular focus on solving business problems rather than individual issues. If you can plot business and infrastructure metrics together you can become much more efficient at troubleshooting and deploying resources. The right monitoring tool can be an essential tool in achieving these objectives.

About the Author Steve Francis is the founder and chief Product Officer, LogicMonitor, a SaaS-based IT infrastructure monitoring company.

Mobile Apps are a $30 Billion Big Business

Allison Howen — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Mobile applications are a $30 billion business, according to new Market Data from ABI Research.

The market intelligence company reveals that cumulative mobile app revenues are forecasted to pass $30 billion by the end of this year, which is nearly double the amount that was reached by the end of 2011. The cumulative revenue includes money made from pay-per-downloads, in-app purchases, subscriptions and in-app advertisements.

“Consumers’ high interest in apps has for a long time been obvious from download volumes, but it’s 2012 that will go down in history as the year when the economic side of the business finally took off,” said ABI Research Senior Analyst Aapo Markkanen. “We’re no longer talking only about a short-term gold rush. Apps have become a major digital industry.”

It is also important to note that even though Apple was the catalyst behind monetizing mobile applications, Markkanen claims that Android developers are estimated to receive about one-third of annual app revenues.

React in Real-Time with In-App Analytics

Michael Garrity — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:45:00 GMT

The rapid pace of the Web, and mobile Web in particular, means the quicker developers and advertisers can get application analytics data, the better off they’ll be.

Mobile customer intelligence solution Kontagent recognized this fact, and used it as the foundation for its latest analytics solution offering, the Kontagent Partner Edition, which it created in conjunction with (and provided exclusively through) mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy.

Now, Tabjoy’s publishing and advertising partners will be able to use the Kontagent Partner Edition to receive “valuable” app data in near real-time. This will provide both developers and advertisers with key insights about their applications, which they can then use to provide better user experiences, improve their acquisition campaigns and maximize monetization.

“Whether you’re an advertiser, small studio or larger publisher, you need access to in-app data in order to understand how to present the right offer to the right user at the right time,” says Jeff Tseng, CEO of Kontagent. “Many fledgling developers are not yet able to afford our enterprise solution, but we hope that by using the Partner Edition, they learn how to leverage data to grow their businesses.”

Safely Deploy HTML5-Based Mobile Apps in the Cloud

Michael Garrity — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:17:00 GMT

appMobi, a provider of cloud-based HTML5 mobile development and deployment tools and services, has officially announced a licensable enterprise version of it’s mobile app development and cloud services stack.

The new service, privateStack, was built to aid businesses, government agencies and other organizations in completing mobile application deployments with end-to-end control for enhanced security and more. Many of appMobi’s enterprise customers had expressed interest in creating hybrid, Web-based mobile apps for different audiences, including sales teams, services technicians, executives, operations personnel and customers.

Hybrid apps tend to appeal to enterprises because of how much they simplify app creation and deployment using HTML5, as opposed to the more arcane languages (e.g. Objective C) used by native app developers. However, these requests were often hampered by concerns about data security, service quality and the general difficulty of distributing corporate apps in public app stores. Thus, appMobi came up with privateStack to address these problems. It will provide enterprise CTOs with the ability to support native-quality, cross-platform, HTML5-based mobile apps with total control over hosting geography, security, user authentication and gateways into corporate data silos.

privateStack comes with all of appMobi’s HTML5 development tools for hybrid development with both appMobi and PhoneGap, as well as all of the features from appMobi’s cloud services platform, including authentication, rich media push messaging, mobile app analytics, remote app updates, in-app purchasing, gamification and social network interfaces.

All privateStack applications can be built into iOS and Android store-ready apps or deployed on secure corporate intranets. The service is offered by appMobi as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for top-tier update and rapid, seamless scalability. It’s also offered in both managed and custom configurations.

Customers interested in hosting privateStack on their personal corporate data centers can do so thanks to the availability of enterprise source licensing.

The Top Shopping Apps Are...

Allison Howen — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 19:15:00 GMT

Mobile has changed the way we live.

From video games to photography, and even shopping – mobile devices have become an intricate part of every day life for many people.

In fact, a recent Nielsen study shows that 47 percent of American smartphone owners used shopping apps in June 2012. This is why it is important for Web workers to put a focus on mobile if they haven’t already – especially merchants. This is particularly true because consumers aren’t only using shopping apps as an alternate channel to make purchases, but are also using these applications as tools for researching products and locating items at local stores.

“Retailers are finding that consumers are willing to use smartphone apps to enhance their shopping experience, and this data shows usage of shopping apps is growing,” says Don Kellogg, Director of Telecom Insights at Nielsen. “As more Americans use their smartphones while shopping and making purchases directly through apps, retailers should consider personalizing their targeted offerings around the needs of individual consumers.”

And while major e-commerce retailers, like eBay and Amazon, are also behind some of the most used smartphone shopping apps, this doesn’t mean that other merchants can’t learn from these retail-giants’ mobile strategies. For example, eBay’s app features daily deals on its homescreen, which is a good attention grabber for the deal-seeking consumer, while traditional retailers, like Target and Walgreens, drive consumers in stores with their apps by featuring tools that help consumers locate products at a nearby store.

For some more application inspiration, check out Nielsen’s list of top 10 shopping apps from June 2012 below:

Deploy Your Apps in the Rackspace Cloud

Michael Garrity — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Cloud computing has provided app developers numerous new opportunities for deploying their creations and growing their audience.

AppFog is a multi-language Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) built for the deployment and management of cloud-based applications; basically, it provides a direct avenue for developers to publish their work in the cloud. It is an infrastructure agnostic service that provides solutions for Java, .NET, node.js, Python, PHP, MySQL, MongoDB, Postgres, and Ruby, among others, so it’s got something for almost every type of developer.

A reliable, scalable, and fast platform for both mobile and Web applications, AppFog currently deploys over 60,000 apps in the cloud that are used by tens of thousands of developers across the world.

Recently, the company announced a major partnership with cloud computing aristocracy. AppFog will begin collaborating with Rackspace so that its customers can deploy applications to the open Rackspace Cloud, which is powered by the company’s OpenStack operating system.

The AppFog solution is going to be available through the brand new Rackspace Cloud Tools Marketplace, a comprehensive catalog of third-party applications designed to be used in the Rackspace Cloud.

Now, AppFog customers can develop and deploy their apps to the Rackspace Cloud in a simple, efficient, and cost effective way. They’ll receive 2GB of free RAM when they create an account, and the service will take a pay-for-RAM approach after that.

The key to this partnership is interoperability; current AppFog customers deploying their work on other Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers can redeploy the apps to the Rackspace Cloud with zero-code migrations. This provides increased flexibility for AppFog users and helps them avoid vendor lock-in.

Break Out of Your Creative Cage

Michael Garrity — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:45:00 GMT

One of the really great things about working on the Web is that it can be done from pretty much anywhere, as long as there is some kind of connection. This, of course, has its downsides, particularly when it comes to collaborative projects.

Many companies have tried to find a solution to this problem by creating tools aimed at these professional teams that may not always be within the immediate proximity of one another.

One such tool is Cage, a brand new collaboration application that allows creative teams to present their work for feedback and approval. The app just recently launched its public beta version.

Creative professionals can use the application to easily upload and present files, but they can do far more than that. It also allows them to manage tasks, organize revisions, and receive approvals form team members in a single environment. The public beta version is undergoing a massive redesign and interface redevelopment, as well as introducing a multitude of new or improved features.

Some of these enhancements include the ability to manage, assign, and complete tasks within the app, in-app sharing, a video player with the ability to offer frame-by-frame feedback, support for a wide variety of file types, customizable email notifications, an archive of inactive products, and more.

Since its private beta release in 2011, Cage has been utilized by over 20,000 creative professionals, including employees of Marvel Comics, Electronic Arts, Target, Twitter, and more.

Sub-Feeds and Experiential Backgrounds in AppMakr Release

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:45:00 GMT

One of the most popular DIY platforms for building iOS, Android and Windows apps is AppMakr - and wouldn't you know, it just keeps getting better.

The platform has released several new features worthy of note but here are the highlights:

- Introduction of a new main menu page that can be customized with a background image or logo, or a live video background that plays on a loop. This could be used for a product demo, application content previews, etc.

- AppMakr has also released a new scrolling menu navigation bar where users will switch from tab to tab through a scrollbar. (see image below)

- Perhaps the most exciting new feature is the release of sub-feeds. Developers using AppMakr can now control their feed layout by merging similar feeds together or adding related subfeeds.

AppMakr has also made it possible to update apps live – only for iOS and Android, has rebuilt its feed parser so feeds can be updated, edited and removed, included the ability to customize content layout of RSS/Atom feeds with HTML, and revamped its photo album feature to render in landscape view.

Add Coupons and Offers Directly to Consumer Payment Cards

Michael Garrity — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Gamification and digital coupon company Fanplayr has been on a partnership acquisition binge as of late. It has already signed off on joint ventures with eBay’s X.Commerce platform, Shopify, ifeelgoods, MailChimp and Constant Contact, and now it has added CardSpring to the list.

CardSpring, for the unfamiliar, is a payment platform that helps developers add both Web and mobile applications (including coupons, loyalty programs and digital receipts) to credit and debit cards.

Adding the CardSpring API to the First Data OfferWise solution with Fanplayr’s Gamified “Smart & Targeted” Coupons and Offers platform means that merchants can add Fanplayr coupons straight to a consumer’s payment card. This allows the shopper to turn around and redeem it in real time at the point-of-sale.

The result is a simplified coupon collection and redemption process for both the merchant and consumer, and another step toward improving the digital reward experience for all parties.

With this latest pairing, Fanplayr continues to expand upon its ability to help merchants and retailers reach, influence and convert online shoppers.

App Development with a Local Flavor

Michael Garrity — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Adding background location tracking and geo-fencing to your latest application just got considerably easier.

Popular app development tool provider Appcelerator is including Geoloqi services to its Titanium 2.0 platform. This means that Appcelerator’s 1.6 million iOS and Android Titanium-using developers will now be able to include geo-triggered events into their applications, and Geoloqi’s technology was designed to do so in a simple, battery-efficient way.

Using carrier signals, GPS, Wi-Fi and indoor tracking systems, Geoloqi is able to help apps track where a user is, which means the app can then present messages or trigger actions based on their location.

New Titanium developers can get a two-month free trial from Appcelerator if they register and download the Geoloqi Titanium module by the end of June.

Facebook Announces Social App Center

Michael Garrity — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Following in the footsteps of Apple, Google and many others, Facebook announced plans to unveil its own app store in the coming weeks.

This new offering will give developers a new avenue for promoting their work across multiple mobile platforms, while adding another place for users to discover new apps.

The thoughtfully named Facebook App Center will allow users to search for Facebook apps that run on the Web, as well as iOS and Android devices, provided the applications have some kind of tie into Facebook, which at the very least means using Facebook Login.

Apps will be searchable by category and ratings, with the most popular among them highlighted for convenience.

Facebook plans to set the App Center apart from its competitors by offering a social aspect to the discovery process. Instead of showing a single list of top apps that is identical for every user, each individual will see a list of recommended apps based on what their Facebook friends are using.

Developers can charge users for their apps, and anyone interested in building for the Facebook App Center can see the guidelines here.

Enterprise-class Service Opens its Doors

Michael Garrity — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Like Prometheus, enterprise-class Web and cloud systems monitoring company Monitis is bringing power usually reserved for the largest of large-scale businesses to everybody else. The company recently announced that it was going to extend all of its enterprise monitoring features into Monitor.Us, its free monitoring service.

Now, businesses of any size will be able to leverage enterprise-class features to gain insights into the performance of their Web systems. This major change will make Monitor.Us one of the most feature-rich free hosted Web and cloud-monitoring systems on the market.

This move was made in large part because of rapid cloud adoption by companies of all shapes and sizes, a switch that makes it more important for businesses to be in charge of their IT systems regardless of location.

Until recently, many of the most powerful Web application performance tools were far too complex (and expensive) for small and medium-sized businesses to even consider, but this makes 77 new features available to virtually anyone who wants them. This opens up a host of benefits for companies that want to leverage Web and cloud systems monitoring, including supporting a smooth transition to the cloud that lets companies know their applications are secure.

The new features include a cloud monitoring service for the free and independent monitoring of cloud apps and environments, a real browser end user-monitoring service that lets businesses conduct full-page monitoring of load speeds to identify individual problems and a custom monitoring service that lets users create their own “types” of monitors for their highly specific individual needs.

The Real (Energy) Cost of Free Apps

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:35:00 GMT

A recent study at Purdue University revealed some interesting information that may just help businesses sell a few more paid apps.

As it turns out, as much as 75 percent of the energy consumed by free Android applications is actually spent serving ads or tracking and uploading user data for marketers. Popular apps like the free version of Angry Birds or the NYTimes were shown to only use about 10-30 percent of their energy consumption to actually power their core functions.

All this means that running a single free app can completely drain the battery of some smartphones in approximately 90 minutes.

This discovery was made my computer scientists at the university as they were developing a software to analyze the energy usage of different applications. A lot of the energy being used in some of that apps was for things like finding and uploading the user’s location with a GPS to send them location-based ads via a 3G connection.

Much of the energy consumption is blamed on inefficient third-party code that developers include in free apps to turn some kind of profit from them.

Feeding Facebook More Data

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Facebook this week rolled out an interesting enhancement to its API which will enable developers to extend the same capabilities of a status update – including adding friends and indicating location – directly from any Facebook-enabled app.

Location and friends can now be added as properties to any photo, video, link, or status.

What this enables developers to do is essentially feed Facebook more data. Instead of a user indicating where they are eating, they are now able to indicate where they are eating and with whom.

In short, app developers can help their users share more detail on their timelines. Facebook is essentially giving developers the same functions it already provides users to when they are creating status updates.

Facebook has also added some controls for managing tags. New app users will be able to select the audience they would like to share their app activity with in a permissions dialog box and choose to feature, hide or route the stories for tag review.

10 API’s to Integrate within Your Next Website/Application

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:31:00 GMT

To stand out with today’s more savvy and sophisticated user, you’ll need to push the boundaries and be disruptive when it comes to the experience you provide. Website Magazine pays close attention to news and events related to API’s and that’s as good a place as any to start. Below you’ll find a list of recently updated/released API’s that you may want to consider integration with your next website or application.

Advertising: Google’s Affiliate Network API enables publishers to look up advertisers and access order and lead transactions.

Answers: Ask500People’s API allows users to vote, create polls and retrive data from the Ask500People website.

Bookmarking: Gimme Bar’s API allows developers to access user collections, get user information, post and access collections.

Social: The Badgeville API allows developers to manage reward programs, access behavior information and manage user information.

Calendar: Online scheduling and appointment setting service MakePlans enables developers to access and integration the sites services into their sites/apps.

Education: The API from Blackboard Collaborate enables developers to integrate the services features into any learning management or content management system.

Tools: Yahoo's Content Analysis API enables users to perform content analysis on text or a URL. The API can extract terms from content and rank them based on their overall importance to content.

Invoicing: The FetchFlow API enables developers to access client information, create and manage invoices and retrieve estimate information.

Feed Search: An API from Q-Sensei offers a multi-dimension search and indexing technology to leverage both structured and unstructured data.

Database: Amazon’s DynamoDB (a NoSQL database) API enables developers to create, update and delete tables from a database.

Media Management: MetaCDN’s API supports user account management as well as functions including creating, retrieving, updating and deleting media elements.

Media Search: The Library of Congress provides access to an image collection that can be incorporated into other apps.