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Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Part Two: 4 Strategies to Ensure Website Performance

Start with Part One of this article: Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Are You Ready?

In this era of unprecedented complexity, it's virtually impossible for a modern website to eliminate all the risk associated with using third parties. However, there are proactive strategies an organization can implement to better manage and minimize their risk. These include:

1. Proactively monitor speed and availability

Proactively monitor the speed and availability of websites, web applications and mobile sites from the true end-user perspective.

Today, there are so many elements out there on the web that stand between your data center and your users, including not just third-party services, but content delivery networks (CDNs), local and regional ISPs, mobile carrier networks and browsers, for example. Measuring performance from your data center alone is insufficient – unless, of course, your users live in your data center, which is highly unlikely.

The true browser-based perspective is the only place where you can accurately gauge your user's experience at the end of an extremely long and complicated technology path known as the application delivery chain. Today's new generation application performance management (APM) solutions are based on this true user perspective.

2. Monitor all transactions

Monitor all transactions, 24x7 along the complete application delivery chain. Sampling is not a sufficient means of gauging performance, of course, because a major performance issue may very well occur outside your testing interval – think of the Amazon EC2 outage that impacted Netflix on Christmas day last year!

Due to the unpredictability of major service outages, you need to be monitoring all transactions around the clock, to identify all performance aberrations and their root causes – both within and beyond the firewall – quickly and accurately, and get ahead of them.

3. Baseline and uphold performance-focused SLAs

Service-level agreements (SLAs) promising a certain level of availability on the part of a third-party service provider mean very little when it comes to performance.

For example, just because your cloud service provider's servers are up and running does not mean your users are experiencing an acceptable level of speed and reliability. Remember, third party services of all types are serving thousands of customers like you around the globe, and a spike in another customer's traffic may impact you.

With little insight into third party service providers' capacity planning decisions, you need to monitor performance levels yourself to ensure they don't drop off, and validate these against performance-focused SLAs. To get a sense of how a third party service provider may be impacting your overall performance, it can be helpful to compare your site's speed and availability before the third party service is added, to afterwards.

4. Utilize industry resources

Utilize industry resources to better assess if the source of a performance problem lies with you or one of your third-party service providers, as well as the likely performance impact on your customers.

These services may not prevent third party service outages from happening, but they can help companies better understand the source of performance problems so they can get in front of them more confidently and efficiently.

Conclusion

The reality is: the delivery chain underlying the services we often take for granted is so tenuous, that it's a marvel they don't break down more often. While outages may be inevitable, this does not make them any less costly or damaging to a company's reputation and revenues.

For example, on August 19, Amazon's North American retail site went down for about 49 minutes, with visitors greeted with the word “oops.” No explanation was given, but one estimate by Forbes put the cost to Amazon at nearly $2 million in sales.

But it's not just the “big guys” like Amazon that you need to focus on. The fact is that little storms are happening on the internet all the time, and you need to be prepared for them. When it comes to surviving and thriving in the age of increasing web complexity, an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure. By taking advantage of several relatively simple and inexpensive approaches, organizations can better exploit all that third party services have to offer, while reducing the inherent risks.

Klaus Enzenhofer is Technology Strategist for Compuware APM’s Center of Excellence.

Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Part One: Are You Ready?

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Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Part Two: 4 Strategies to Ensure Website Performance

Start with Part One of this article: Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Are You Ready?

In this era of unprecedented complexity, it's virtually impossible for a modern website to eliminate all the risk associated with using third parties. However, there are proactive strategies an organization can implement to better manage and minimize their risk. These include:

1. Proactively monitor speed and availability

Proactively monitor the speed and availability of websites, web applications and mobile sites from the true end-user perspective.

Today, there are so many elements out there on the web that stand between your data center and your users, including not just third-party services, but content delivery networks (CDNs), local and regional ISPs, mobile carrier networks and browsers, for example. Measuring performance from your data center alone is insufficient – unless, of course, your users live in your data center, which is highly unlikely.

The true browser-based perspective is the only place where you can accurately gauge your user's experience at the end of an extremely long and complicated technology path known as the application delivery chain. Today's new generation application performance management (APM) solutions are based on this true user perspective.

2. Monitor all transactions

Monitor all transactions, 24x7 along the complete application delivery chain. Sampling is not a sufficient means of gauging performance, of course, because a major performance issue may very well occur outside your testing interval – think of the Amazon EC2 outage that impacted Netflix on Christmas day last year!

Due to the unpredictability of major service outages, you need to be monitoring all transactions around the clock, to identify all performance aberrations and their root causes – both within and beyond the firewall – quickly and accurately, and get ahead of them.

3. Baseline and uphold performance-focused SLAs

Service-level agreements (SLAs) promising a certain level of availability on the part of a third-party service provider mean very little when it comes to performance.

For example, just because your cloud service provider's servers are up and running does not mean your users are experiencing an acceptable level of speed and reliability. Remember, third party services of all types are serving thousands of customers like you around the globe, and a spike in another customer's traffic may impact you.

With little insight into third party service providers' capacity planning decisions, you need to monitor performance levels yourself to ensure they don't drop off, and validate these against performance-focused SLAs. To get a sense of how a third party service provider may be impacting your overall performance, it can be helpful to compare your site's speed and availability before the third party service is added, to afterwards.

4. Utilize industry resources

Utilize industry resources to better assess if the source of a performance problem lies with you or one of your third-party service providers, as well as the likely performance impact on your customers.

These services may not prevent third party service outages from happening, but they can help companies better understand the source of performance problems so they can get in front of them more confidently and efficiently.

Conclusion

The reality is: the delivery chain underlying the services we often take for granted is so tenuous, that it's a marvel they don't break down more often. While outages may be inevitable, this does not make them any less costly or damaging to a company's reputation and revenues.

For example, on August 19, Amazon's North American retail site went down for about 49 minutes, with visitors greeted with the word “oops.” No explanation was given, but one estimate by Forbes put the cost to Amazon at nearly $2 million in sales.

But it's not just the “big guys” like Amazon that you need to focus on. The fact is that little storms are happening on the internet all the time, and you need to be prepared for them. When it comes to surviving and thriving in the age of increasing web complexity, an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure. By taking advantage of several relatively simple and inexpensive approaches, organizations can better exploit all that third party services have to offer, while reducing the inherent risks.

Klaus Enzenhofer is Technology Strategist for Compuware APM’s Center of Excellence.

Down Goes the Internet (Again) – Part One: Are You Ready?

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...