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The Power of the Pivot

A look into the benefits of combining user experience monitoring with application side analysis
Denis Goodwin

The ability to view things from the end user perspective and to drill down into the code level deep dive can be extremely powerful, and the information gathered from this ability provides DevOps teams with an instant view into the direct root cause of any user experience problem they may not otherwise have noticed.

Traditional real-user monitoring (RUM) techniques provide insight into how your user actually interacts with your website or application. Synthetic monitoring, particularly when using real browsers, provides a similar assessment of expected user experience along with the benefits of true availability monitoring, third-party impact, and consistent baselining capabilities.

Combining synthetic and RUM gives a complete view of the user experience along with high level root cause clues. RUM, by itself, can miss outages, page errors, and third-party problems. Synthetic, by itself, is really only a proxy for real-user experience and can miss problems experienced by various user populations. Using both techniques in tandem eliminates those inherent blind spots and can provide an organization with the best view of their users’ experience – both actual and potential.


But monitoring user experience only tells you half of the story. The ability to look at things from the application/back-end perspective and drill down to the code (or up to end-user transactions) is a powerful root cause identifier. By discovering problems in delivery, DevOps teams can work to prevent or minimize user impact on their software.

Application and server monitoring provide insight into relative transaction performance. Furthermore, it provides an accurate view into the root cause of user experience degradation in your own infrastructure. These tools allow developers to identify issues before code is deployed while simultaneously giving ops teams the tools to address issues and communicate to app owners in real time. Providing this flexible view of user experience and application health provides a clear view of impact and root cause, allowing dev and ops to work together prevent and minimize damaging negative user experiences. Having all of this working together at the same time will do wonders for your overall relationship with your end user.

The ability to pivot the perspective from user experience to application transaction performance can give your organization a powerful view into user experience and root cause diagnostics. Put another way, it helps to answer the “what” along with (possibly more importantly) the “why” when it comes to performance issues. When these perspectives are seamlessly tied together and are easily available to a variety of technical and business users, the result can only be APM awesomeness!

Denis Goodwin is Director of Product Management for APM at SmartBear.

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The Power of the Pivot

A look into the benefits of combining user experience monitoring with application side analysis
Denis Goodwin

The ability to view things from the end user perspective and to drill down into the code level deep dive can be extremely powerful, and the information gathered from this ability provides DevOps teams with an instant view into the direct root cause of any user experience problem they may not otherwise have noticed.

Traditional real-user monitoring (RUM) techniques provide insight into how your user actually interacts with your website or application. Synthetic monitoring, particularly when using real browsers, provides a similar assessment of expected user experience along with the benefits of true availability monitoring, third-party impact, and consistent baselining capabilities.

Combining synthetic and RUM gives a complete view of the user experience along with high level root cause clues. RUM, by itself, can miss outages, page errors, and third-party problems. Synthetic, by itself, is really only a proxy for real-user experience and can miss problems experienced by various user populations. Using both techniques in tandem eliminates those inherent blind spots and can provide an organization with the best view of their users’ experience – both actual and potential.


But monitoring user experience only tells you half of the story. The ability to look at things from the application/back-end perspective and drill down to the code (or up to end-user transactions) is a powerful root cause identifier. By discovering problems in delivery, DevOps teams can work to prevent or minimize user impact on their software.

Application and server monitoring provide insight into relative transaction performance. Furthermore, it provides an accurate view into the root cause of user experience degradation in your own infrastructure. These tools allow developers to identify issues before code is deployed while simultaneously giving ops teams the tools to address issues and communicate to app owners in real time. Providing this flexible view of user experience and application health provides a clear view of impact and root cause, allowing dev and ops to work together prevent and minimize damaging negative user experiences. Having all of this working together at the same time will do wonders for your overall relationship with your end user.

The ability to pivot the perspective from user experience to application transaction performance can give your organization a powerful view into user experience and root cause diagnostics. Put another way, it helps to answer the “what” along with (possibly more importantly) the “why” when it comes to performance issues. When these perspectives are seamlessly tied together and are easily available to a variety of technical and business users, the result can only be APM awesomeness!

Denis Goodwin is Director of Product Management for APM at SmartBear.

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 ...

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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 ...