Compuware Corporation introduced the Compuware Olympic Web Performance Scoreboard, which provides a view into how top global media websites are performing during the London Olympic games.

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games are taking place in London, from July 27 to August 12, 2012, and fans worldwide will turn to media outlets throughout the world to follow their country's favorite athletes and events. Will these media websites be prepared for the challenges related to surging demand? How will the increase in traffic impact site speeds and user experiences?

Compuware will provide insight into the website performance of the top media outlets across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. During the two weeks of Olympic competition, the Compuware Olympic Web Performance Scoreboard, will measure how top media websites are performing compared to a typical non-peak period.

Performance is critical to any media website's success, but the challenge is balancing rich user experiences with site speed. While rich experiences drive more traffic, they can also cause an increase in page load time, which can increase abandonment rate and impact revenue generated through advertising and premium content. Striking the right balance between speed and functionality will be the difference between attracting and keeping users coming back during the games or sending them to competitor sites.

"Regardless of how well prepared these media sites are, the fact is application errors, database performance, incomplete transactions, slowness in third-party services, bottlenecks in garbage collection, slow memory leaks, JavaScript errors - and many more issues - all stand ready to disrupt performance," said Steve Tack, VP of Product Management, Compuware APM. "The only way media outlets can truly be prepared is to provide websites that can scale to meet demand and remain stable under load. Insight into performance must be in real time, and these organizations must be able to identify issues immediately to resolve them before users are impacted."

With applications becoming increasingly complex, infrastructures being virtualized and endpoint diversity, including smart phones and tablets growing, media sites are more intricate than ever before. Media organizations must have continuous insight into third-party services and business transactions.

"Owners of web properties need more than just uptime stats and page views to make informed decisions. They need to know how performance is impacting users' online experiences. They need visibility down to code-level of each business-critical transaction to spot the true root-cause of issues and resolve them immediately. After all, it only takes one application failure to destroy overall performance," says Tack.