Skip to main content

The Importance of Real and Synthetic End User Monitoring

Dennis Rietvink

Organizations have many ways of ensuring that their systems are functioning properly. One of the most important things to measure, when assessing the performance of a system, is the end user experience.

Can users access the system quickly? Do they experience errors while accessing the system? Can they easily interact with the system across all the available channels? For the IT department, the answers to these questions determine whether or not the system is functioning properly. For the organization, they reveal the most important thing – whether or not their customers are happy, and are likely to continue using their services.

There are two ways to monitor user transactions and interactions with your website:

Real User Monitoring

This method uses a passive monitoring system, documenting all actions of users as they interact with your website. The feedback, generated in real time, is automatically assessed against established benchmarks, to correctly measure the quality of delivered services.

Real user monitoring systems have many advantages – you get to know exactly how visitors to your website experience all its features and applications, and how the website is performing for your end users in various geographic locations. The biggest problem with this method is that you won’t know about any website issues until at least one user gets to experience an existing problem.

Synthetic User Monitoring

This method simulates user experience on your website. It works by scripting typical user actions, and then simulates user click at regular intervals, to ensure that your website is responsive.

This method enables you to proactively catch any existing problems before your end users get to experience slow or unresponsive applications, or encounter other errors.

The obvious downside is that this method requires you to spend time scripting typical user actions. In addition, if your website changes frequently, you’ll need to periodically update your scripted scenarios.

In addition to websites, synthetic transactions can be used to monitor databases and TCP ports.

Organizations need a solution that can help recognize potential system problems by categorizing and visually presenting information concerning end user behavior and website performance in real time. In addition, such solution should also offer a way to script common user transactions and monitor the system’s performance 24x7.

End user monitoring reflects end user health, but doesn’t tell you the root cause of a problem. Linking end user monitoring data with application and infrastructure monitoring data enables organizations to determine the impact of a problem, rank its priority and quickly navigate to the root cause.

Dennis Rietvink is Co-Founder and VP of Product Management at Savision

Hot Topics

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 ...

The Importance of Real and Synthetic End User Monitoring

Dennis Rietvink

Organizations have many ways of ensuring that their systems are functioning properly. One of the most important things to measure, when assessing the performance of a system, is the end user experience.

Can users access the system quickly? Do they experience errors while accessing the system? Can they easily interact with the system across all the available channels? For the IT department, the answers to these questions determine whether or not the system is functioning properly. For the organization, they reveal the most important thing – whether or not their customers are happy, and are likely to continue using their services.

There are two ways to monitor user transactions and interactions with your website:

Real User Monitoring

This method uses a passive monitoring system, documenting all actions of users as they interact with your website. The feedback, generated in real time, is automatically assessed against established benchmarks, to correctly measure the quality of delivered services.

Real user monitoring systems have many advantages – you get to know exactly how visitors to your website experience all its features and applications, and how the website is performing for your end users in various geographic locations. The biggest problem with this method is that you won’t know about any website issues until at least one user gets to experience an existing problem.

Synthetic User Monitoring

This method simulates user experience on your website. It works by scripting typical user actions, and then simulates user click at regular intervals, to ensure that your website is responsive.

This method enables you to proactively catch any existing problems before your end users get to experience slow or unresponsive applications, or encounter other errors.

The obvious downside is that this method requires you to spend time scripting typical user actions. In addition, if your website changes frequently, you’ll need to periodically update your scripted scenarios.

In addition to websites, synthetic transactions can be used to monitor databases and TCP ports.

Organizations need a solution that can help recognize potential system problems by categorizing and visually presenting information concerning end user behavior and website performance in real time. In addition, such solution should also offer a way to script common user transactions and monitor the system’s performance 24x7.

End user monitoring reflects end user health, but doesn’t tell you the root cause of a problem. Linking end user monitoring data with application and infrastructure monitoring data enables organizations to determine the impact of a problem, rank its priority and quickly navigate to the root cause.

Dennis Rietvink is Co-Founder and VP of Product Management at Savision

Hot Topics

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 ...