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Webinar: Perfecting Application Performance in Citrix Environments

On-Demand Recording Now Available Here

Our Webinar presented by AppEnsure CTO Sri Chaganty focused on how IT Operations can utilize the AppEnsure solution when troubleshooting large, distributed Citrix environments — especially when Citrix is wrongfully blamed. AppEnsure gives IT Operations the ability to stop the finger pointing and quickly identify the “real” root cause of performance problems by understanding the underlying infrastructure supporting XenApp and XenDesktop.  This presentation will help you understand the depth of application operational intelligence you can develop in your Citrix environments.

Attendees learned how they can use the AppEnsure solution to:

• Understand the reason for poor application performance for both custom and purchased applications that are being delivered using Citrix delivery methods
• Stop wasting IT resources while in war room meetings guessing at the root cause of an incident – identify if it is the Citrix Silo or the infrastructure behind or the interactions with the infrastructure that are causing the perceived Citrix problems
• Protect revenue and business productivity by preventing long outages by understanding behavior and usage profiles of every application or VDI being delivered using Citrix technologies

The Webinar focused on the following AppEnsure product features:

• AppEnsure’s Application Operational Intelligence
• Automatic discovery of every application by name – delivered using Citrix XenApp or Citrix XenDesktop
• Automatic and dynamic topology mapping – end to end – beyond the Citrix silos
• Automatic measurement of application response time and throughput hop-by-hop and end-to-end – for every application/image being published by Citrix
• Know every application that is being used within the VDI
• Automatic data correlation to provide root cause diagnosis

WEBINAR TITLE: Perfecting Application Performance in Citrix Environments
Watch Recorded Webinar Now

A new video discussing how IT Operations can utilize the AppEnsure solution when troubleshooting large, distributed Citrix environments is now available. Oftentimes, Citrix is wrongfully blamed when users experience slow response times. AppEnsure gives IT Operations the ability to stop the finger pointing and quickly identify the “real” root cause of performance problems.

AppEnsure, an Application-Aware Infrastructure Performance Management solution, understands the dynamic characteristics of all infrastructure elements supporting XenApp and XenDesktop and can optimize the performance of any and every application. This leads to increased revenue from revenue-generating applications and improved end-user experience, employee productivity, service availability and response time across the entire infrastructure.

Perfect the performance of applications in Citrix environments and identify the true culprit for poor performance. Enjoy the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drIzGHYfIzE

When application delivery problems occur and end users are complaining, oftentimes the fingers start pointing to IT Operations. Let’s look at one feature, Dynamic Topology Mapping, of the AppEnsure solution that aids IT Operations in troubleshooting.

AppEnsure

• helps IT Operations determine root cause of application performance problems by providing a dynamic topology map for any application – even the ones you didn’t know were running on your infrastructure,
• provides a real-time view of currently running applications, their topology maps and response time and throughput for each hop, IT Operations can quickly see any deviations from normal behavior, and
• with its Application Operational Intelligence, highlights the hop experiencing the deviation so you can quickly drill down to identify the root cause of the problem.

Learn about more feature of the AppEsnure solution on our products page.

When planning to launch the new AppEnsure web site, I started with the basic question “What do visitors want?” My fellow AppEnsure team members (who are never shy in expressing themselves) all had immediate responses. The Sales team wanted contact information to be easy to find, Engineering wanted to highlight all of the cool product features, and the Marketing team wanted to improve the overall look and user experience. One response that everyone agreed upon was to bring the value AppEnsure provides to the forefront.

So, along with our new web site look, the new section Benefits clearly states the value the AppEnsure solution brings to IT Operations teams in four simple bullet points:

•     Increase top line revenue from applications – custom built or off the shelf
•     Improve user experience on all applications by reducing response time
•     Improve employee productivity
•     Improve service availability and response time across the entire infrastructure

But in my interviewing and writing content for the entire site, I noticed value in many other places too:

AppEnsure provides immediate value by automatically discovering applications. One AppEnsure Sales team member shared that every discussion with someone who has installed our evaluation software states, “I knew applications were running and disrupting the infrastructure but I had no idea what kind they were or what they were doing.”

The latest software release includes a valuable new executive dashboard. AppEnsure Engineering were happiest to talk about this new feature. Upon entering the AppEnsure solution, a simple screen gives you a quick overview of the number of applications, users and alarms — the basic information IT Operations wants when determining normal user/application/infrastructure behavior.

One customer pointed out the value in our topology maps. Because our topology maps are dynamic, IT Operations never try and troubleshoot with an outdated, static view of the infrastructure and the applications running on it. In real-time, the AppEnsure solution displays all of the nodes an application is utilizing and gives response time and throughput metrics hop-by-hop end-to-end. This customer stated, “The best part is any behavior deviation is highlighted and I can quickly drill down to the root cause.”

I enjoy creating new web sites and the process leading up to launch day. I hope you find the new web site – valuable – and value when evaluating our product.

Our CEO, Colin, was invited to speak on a panel by AlwaysOn at their annual summit, OnDemand 2014. The sessions title, Next Generation Infrastructure, is a broad subject but one that Colin has specific views and opinions. He is joined by other CEOs and the audience questions are interesting for such a broad subject.

A couple sample questions for the panel were:

• How do you see application performance as enterprises migrate to the cloud?
• Should application performance management systems automatically control the infrastructure?

The panel included:

• Host: Masoud Loghmani, Director, Open Innovation and Strategy, Accenture
• Manav Mital, CEO, Instart Logic
• Matthew Prince, CEO, CloudFlare
• Colin Macnab, CEO, AppEnsure
• Enjoy the session in the video below.

The constant question I ask myself throughout my work day is: Does this make sense for AppEnsure? Now that can simply be translated into: Does that make sense for AppEnsure users? because one of our company’s main philosophies is if it makes sense for our users, it makes sense for our business. So, when the topic of a logo redesign was first discussed we knew we needed a new logo to match the sleekness and maturity of our product but more importantly we needed a logo our users would like since they will also be seeing it and clicking on it regularly. I know design is subjective, so have a look at the new AppEnsure logo. *Hopefully* you agree and you like it too.

A few insights into some of the logo design choices:

• “ae” symbol. With literally thousands of companies in technology, the best symbol to reinforce our brand and to be easily identified is a symbol that reinforces our name. Note the symbol is the same when viewed upside down (if you ever see yourself in that position).
• Emphasis on ENSURE. It’s subtle, but the letters ENSURE appear in bold in the logotype because our users have a simple goal – ensure all applications are being delivered without any delay.
• 45 degree angle. Another subtlety, but the symbol has several angles pointing up-and-to-the-right. It’s a subliminal message of the direction of your career when using AppEnsure.

So, AppEnsure users, do you like it? Let us know on Twitter at @AppEnsure

At AppEnsure, we love winning awards! (Really though, who doesn’t?) This time we are in great company and it further validates the unique application performance solution we bring to IT Operations.

AlwaysOn, the well-known Silicon Valley media company, has recognized AppEnsure as one of the 2014 OnDemand Top 100 winners.  Inclusion in the OnDemand 100 signifies leadership amongst its peers and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. AppEnsure was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Obviously, we are honored to win the award and to be included with other winning companies including Dropbox, Pure Storage, Good Technologies and many more amazing technology companies. But the recognition that we are providing an innovative solution is the real award and we gladly will add the award logo to our growing list of accomplishments.

A full list of all the OnDemand 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website.

Gartner analyst Jonah Kowall recently published a new report titled “How to Leverage Application-Aware Infrastructure Performance Monitoring to Simplify Root Cause Analysis” that discusses the emerging category of tools developed for IT Operations. The new category, Application-Aware Infrastructure Performance Monitoring (AA-IPM), focuses on the specific needs IT Operations have to effectively support every application in production. This is great news for IT Operations – the people ultimately responsible for ensuring applications are being delivered to end users – because it validates their growing “wish list” to gain visibility into the performance of applications in virtualized data centers, software-defined data centers or clouds.

AA-IPM tools give a holistic view of the performance of applications by presenting critical information and metrics from an infrastructure perspective. They aid in troubleshooting poor application performance and provide visibility into how all of the applications actually perform across the entire infrastructure all the way to the end user. The specific management requirements of an AA-IPM tool and the requirements on IT Operation’s wish list include:

Automatic identification of every Windows and Linux application by name
Automatic discovery and continuous updating of the topology map for every application
Measurement of the end-to-end and hop-by-hop response time and throughput for every application
Capturing of the errors across the entire stack of each application
Automated, and actionable diagnostics when degradations in response time occur
Instant time to value – set up must be simple and show immediate value

For IT Operations, costly bridge calls and endless war room meetings can be averted with this new set of AA-IPM tools. Gartner realizes the need. AppEnsure is ready to help.

Here is a new AppEnsure document that discusses the new challenges IT operations face when managing the performance of XenApp and XenDesktop and the AppEnsure solution. Read the full document here: Managing the Performance of XenApp and XenDesktop Applications

As the dynamic world of managing and monitoring application performance continues to challenge IT operations, this latest blog post by Bernd Harzog of The Virtualization Practice describes the challenges from a VDI perspective, or rather, the end user’s perspective. His blog starts off by describing how a VDI implementation must improve the end user experience because that is their expectation. He then later describes the only way to know if the end user experience has been improved is by measuring response time and throughput for the applications being delivered to the end user’s devices. And lastly, my favorite part of the blog post is when he discusses a few vendor’s solutions and states “if the monitoring tool does not collect response time and throughput, it is not going to meet your needs.”

We, at AppEnsure, couldn’t agree more. We believe that application performance is not equal to resource utilization, it is dependent on knowing how the application traverses the infrastructure and knowing the response time and throughput for every hop from app server to end user device. Thanks Bernd for including AppEnsure in this post and spreading the word on what really matters when measuring end user expectations and experience.

You can read the full blog post here: Addressing Users’ VDI Performance Concerns by Bernd Harzog