This brochure presents a solution that automates and accelerates a core process that consumes 30 to 60 percent of your developers' total time. A process enmeshed in every application development project without adding any business value: the process of problem resolution.
Software errors, or bugs, are so prevalent and so detrimental that according to a study published in 2002 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), they cost the US economy $60 billion a year, or about 0.6% of its gross domestic product. So what can be done?
According to research from Dynamic Markets, engineering teams typically spend nearly 40% of their time supporting production applications. That’s a lot of time NOT working on the next release, the next module, the next product--the one that will help your company maintain its competitive lead, drive new sales, and keep maintenance revenues flowing.
Traditionally viewed as a means to drive down costs, offshoring has become an opportunity to keep development projects on track in the face of onshore talent shortages. Other approaches include investing in application lifecycle management tools that allow for better management of software development projects, or adopting new development methodologies, such as Agile development. Yet, these initiatives still do not address the time-consuming, inefficient process that is common to all development organizations — dealing with application problem resolution.
Overview of Identify's solution for J2EE application problem resolution. AppSight helps enterprises and software vendors optimize the process of resolving application problems throughout the application lifecycle. It dramatically shortens development cycles, while improving software quality, and enables development teams to reclaim up to 40 percent of resources currently lost to resolving application problems.
Overview of Identify's solution for Microsoft Windows and .NET application problem resolution. AppSight helps enterprises and software vendors optimize the process of resolving application problems throughout the application lifecycle. It dramatically shortens development cycles, while improving software quality, and enables development teams to reclaim up to 40 percent of resources currently lost to resolving application problems.
To meet the demand for critical business applications in shorter time frames, many organizations are striving to improve their application development processes. Traditional means (off-shoring, Agile methods, etc.) do not address one key process that's estimated to consume 30 to 60 percent of developers' time and effort — application problem resolution. This paper discusses the problem resolution process and demands it places on developers, how new technology can help developers reduce problem resolution cycles, criteria for a solution that addresses these issues, and how organizations have achieved real business benefits from such a solution.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University estimate programmers make between 100 and 150 errors per 1,000 lines of code. But, according to the Gartner Inc., 80 percent of all applications are not tested thoroughly before being delivered into production. This white paper outlines a pragmatic approach to optimizing quality across the application lifecycle. You’ll learn how innovative companies are delivering higher-quality applications much faster by automating their root cause analysis processes.
The President’s Management Agenda calls for government to efficiently and effectively speed information and services to the public; and now more than ever, government agencies rely on technology services and solutions to ensure optimal performance. However, inefficient software development practices, such as poor problem resolution processes, limit IT’s ability to deliver mission-critical applications that drive government initiatives, thus hindering response to constituent needs. This is true whether applications are outsourced or developed internally. This paper describes a technology approach that optimizes the use of development resources and enables agencies to launch higher-quality, more functionally-rich software applications more quickly at a lower cost.
Companies devote significant resources to resolving bugs, reported issues, or what can generally be called “application problems.” This white paper examines the challenges of application problem resolution and presents three case studies that demonstrate how leading global companies in the banking, telecom, and healthcare industries are using best practices to automate and optimize their root cause analysis processes, eliminate the need to recreate problems before attempting to resolve them, and reduce application maintenance cycles significantly.
Discover how hundreds of top Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have accelerated the launch of new releases, improved product quality, increased customer satisfaction, and reduced support cycles by automating and accelerating their root cause analysis processes throughout the product development/test/support lifecycle.
Recent reports find that 80 percent of the time spent managing a software application lifecycle is spent fixing software defects -- which steals away time that the development team could spend working on the next business-critical software project. This paper presents recommendations for comprehensive problem management and describes how IT organizations can effectively pinpoint and resolve application problems, while reducing costs.
Whether you are developing Windows/.NET applications or supporting them, an automated problem resolution process will allow you to build more new functionality, execute more tests, and accelerate the release of applications — all while maintaining or reducing project costs. This white paper discusses how the BMC AppSight Problem Resolution System automates the problem resolution process in Windows/.NET environments and outlines the most common application problems.
Whether you are developing J2EE applications or supporting them, an automated problem resolution process will allow you to build more new functionality, execute more tests, and accelerate the release of applications — all while maintaining or reducing project costs. This paper discusses how the BMC AppSight Problem Resolution System automates the problem resolution process in J2EE environments, and outlines the most common J2EE application problems.
This paper reviews methods for creating an environment of controlled, secure access to complete problem data for your developers, providing them with the capabilities they need to solve production problems without actually accessing the production environment.
With Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Microsoft delivered highly productive, tightly integrated, and extensible lifecycle tools that facilitate communication among members of the development team and reduce the complexity of the application development lifecycle. This white paper outlines how the integration of Identify's AppSight system enhances Visual Studio Team System by automating and accelerating root cause analysis -- one of the most time-consuming and costly processes throughout the application lifecycle.
"Before AppSight, tough customer problems pulled our developers away from their new product work for intolerably long stretches. Now that AppSight reveals the root causes, they can be instant heroes and get right back on task."
"AppSight allows us to analyze production problems we’d never find through performance testing and a traditional QA process, so we can recover quickly and continually deliver the highest quality applications to our clients."
"For example, we encounter instances where applications freeze,” Ben-David explains. In order to diagnose and solve the problem, Clal Insurance would normally need to map out all of the possible conditions under which this problem occurs and examine each until the problem was fixed. “With AppSight Black Box Software, problems can be captured, communicated and analyzed leading to fast resolution. With AppSight, we see exactly what happens during a specific transaction."
CFB did not consider other software vendors. "To our knowledge, this is the only product that comes anywhere near doing this type of detailed work with relatively little tweaking on our part," Gulsvig says. The final decision to buy AppSight "really boils down to a couple of points: very little tweaking, and it would deploy onto our system with a very small footprint. We did not need to make any modifications that would be detrimental to the system."
"We are seeing substantial benefits and great ROI by using the BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System throughout our organization and throughout the lifecycle of our products. In the last year, it has clearly saved us hundreds of development days."
“Given the complexity of our system, resolving these kinds of application errors is very costly and time-consuming,” explains Hampton. “Recently, for example, we had a problem with a specific transaction failing to complete its update sequence through our system. It took us three days, involving two people each from three functional groups to determine that the error was the result of an Oracle database being taken offline for regular maintenance. Getting to the root cause of that problem took us over 140 man-hours. Now, AppSight enables us to record the exact movement of a transaction and the associated activity. With AppSight, we solve this kind of problem in less than an hour,” states Hampton.
"Because AppSight enables us to find and fix such a wide range of application problems more quickly, we can maintain a more reliable technology infrastructure as our business continues to expand..."
"We estimated AppSight would save the bank over $900,000 over a period of 5 years. A year after implementation, we calculated that our ROI for the first year of operation alone amounted to more than $1,000,000."
“We solve more problems quicker without increasing our staff when we use AppSight and this directly affects customer satisfaction and impacts favorably on the cost to support our products.” - Read the press release
"Because the problem our customer was experiencing was so intermittent, it may have been simply impossible to solve without Black Box. Using Black Box, we not only found the root cause and fixed the problem, we did it without travel costs, without taking our people away from the development work that moves us forward, and without the on-site disruption that can reduce customer confidence.”
"We turned to Identify’s patented AppSight Black Box technology during the cut-over phase so that we could quickly pinpoint problems in real-time and solve them at the root cause. It helped us get to our problems in minutes versus hours, giving us peace of mind that our applications would function smoothly with minimum interruption."
"To my knowledge nothing else out there remotely approaches the functionality of BMC Application Problem Resolution for eliminating the need to recreate issues before resolving them. That saves our teams a lot of time."
"Without AppSight, we might have had to essentially re-create the entire application, examining every line, adding tracing statements, and re-compiling. With AppSight, we capture root causes in the course of production."
"We’ve been growing at such a rate that we had to either raise head counts or raise our productivity,” says Don Sweitzer, director of Development at Softrax. “BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System has made us significantly more productive. It is a very cost-effective approach compared with increasing staffing levels and having to train a lot of new people."
"AppSight saved us at least 30% in QA time and 15-20% in our overall time-to-market. We never would have gotten into trial on time without it. Now we’re rolling AppSight out to our Help Desk to speed up problem resolution in the field."
This paper details the benefits of automating application problem determination and resolution throughout the application life cycle, from development to production. The highlight of the paper is a case study illustrating how one software vendor has leveraged the BMC Application Problem Resolution product to significantly improve the effectiveness of a distributed software development organization.
Most IT organizations have highly inefficient problem resolution processes. This paper explores the extent of this inefficiency and its impact on application development organizations and businesses. It also identifies the most common root causes of inefficient problem resolution processes and recommends remedial action.
"Identify describes AppSight variously as a tool for providing application insight, application support software, and as an application problem resolution system. It is all of these. Put simply, what it allows you to do is to record applications (down to the level of individual keystrokes and mouse clicks) as they are run (whether in production or testing), so that any breakdown or problem in that application can be identified, either as it is running or via playback..."
"It's all too easy to glom onto one feature of an integrated product like AppSight - say, user experience capture - and slot the product into that pigeonhole. AppSight is not, however, monitoring HTTP(S) requests and responses but digging inside the application server and application. It should be as useful in R&D, QA and staging as it is in application support and IT operations. Check out any forum for software testers and you're likely to stumble across high praise for AppSight..."
"Dynamic Markets Ltd. interviewed approx. 500 IT staffers and corporate managers at financial services, manufacturing, and retail companies in the US and UK to get their thoughts on application problems, the impact they have on business, and who's responsible for fixing them. This report summarizes and analyzes their responses..."
"AppSight is a complementary solution which can be used in environments where application monitoring solutions are already in use, but are not helping to identify the underlying problems in applications. It is also appropriate where such monitoring tools are not in place, and its focus is very much on identifying the root causes of incidents. In a complex environment it can be hard to find what is causing any particular problem; AppSight reduces the guessing game and accelerates problem resolution."
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