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TV Tokyo Broadband on AuriQ Systems

Customer Profile - TV Tokyo Broadband Entertainment, Inc. based in Tokyo, Japan is a joint venture of TV Tokyo Corporation, a TV station and Nikkei, NTT and Sharp. They distribute large volumes of downloadable TV content over the Internet through many different web sites to both broadband PC and mobile users.

Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.

Challenge

Within the Japanese market, there has been a significant increase in the amount of mobile web access over a short period of time. In this environment, the convergence of TV-broadcasting and Mobile Web Access has become an important component to many content distributors. One of the unique features of mobile web access is that it is strongly related to real-world events such as TV broadcasts. When a TV program is broadcast, mobile web access to related sites jump instantaneously.

TV Tokyo Broadband Entertainment, Inc. owns and distributes large volumes of popular online TV content. On a daily basis, they update their content to coincide with recent broadcasts. Lately, they’ve seen that their mobile user access increases significantly when a related TV program has been broadcast. In one instance they saw an increase of 70 times their normal traffic volume within a few minutes. Needless to say, this places a huge burden on their system resources leading to decreased response times from their sites.

This combination of needing to change daily their popular content and the rapid increase of mobile user access has made system operations an expensive and time consuming endeavor. In addition, there are 3 major mobile carriers in Japan, each having different web access protocols, with many different phone devices with different features.

The challenge facing the operations team was to optimize the system to reduce their operation costs while increasing their service level. Also, they must assure that content is formatted correctly for all carriers and devices equally. This was no small feat, and they had no viable solution in place that could help facilitate these requirements.

Solution

In 2006 TV Tokyo Broadband Entertainment, Inc. began using AuriQ Systems’ real time analytics solution, RTmetrics. RTmetrics allowed them to monitor the dynamic change of traffic with no impact to their system performance. They now had access to real-time and detailed information about their traffic which is critical in order for them to optimize the system at each occasion appropriately.

Results

With RTmetrics they have gained total visibility of their system operations in real-time. Immediately they were able to

1) Optimize their content per different mobile carrier and reduce daily operation costs
2) Reduce new application development costs and time to develop
3) Reduce the time to bring new content up to the system and improve their service level

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EuroNederland on Managed Methods

“JaxView was a key component that helped us solve this important issue. The easy deployment and versatile capabilities of the product made it possible for us to implement our services more quickly and at a lower cost.”

-- Roy Gnocchi, Head of Technical Infrastructure, EuroNederland

Customer Profile - Euronederland is a service provider to European insurance companies which is based in Amsterdam and has 35 employees, divided into three divisions: application development, operations and services.

Vendor Profile - Managed Methods provides Web services management and runtime SOA governance tools focused on the needs of IT operations, drawing on over ten years of system management experience to build products that fit the dynamic pace and requirements of production IT environments. Based on open standards, their JaxView products are designed for ease of installation and integration into SOA environments. Nearly every aspect of JaxView, from integration, metric engine, alerting, data persistent, and aggregation, is customizable. Whatever stage customers are in with their SOA implementation, JaxView can help with monitoring, managing, and securing Web services.

Summary

EuroNederland was implementing a set of Web services for applications running on main frame platforms. Using these Web services they were able to easily migrate insurance policy applications to a service-oriented architecture. This, however, resulted in a number of communication challenges involving their clients. Some service clients did not understand the schemas used by the Web service responses. Modification of the proprietary components used in the service implementation was not practical. EuroNederland implemented the JaxView Web service management tool as a service gateway between the clients and the mainframe Web services. They then configured JaxView to modify messages exchanges with the clients at runtime to resolve the communication issues.

Konica on AuriQ Systems

“What paths did customers take to get to a site? What content should we show? Is the current content appropriate based on their activity? … We can verify such questions using RTmetrics.”

-- Hiroyuki Iwashima, Manager in the advertisement branch of the Konica Web Group

Customer Profile - Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc. is a Japanese worldwide manufacturer of photo-copiers, fax machines, laser printers, medical graphic equipments, optical components and sensing meters formed by a merger between Japanese imaging firms Konica and Minolta, as announced on January 7, 2003. Therefore, Konica Minolta effectively has two lines of history - that of the Minolta Company and that of the Konica Corporation. The latter was founded in 1873 by Rokusaburo Sugiura, primarily as a photographic material company, it was initially called "Konishiya" after the apothecary in which it started. Konishiya also produced cameras, however were much better known at the time for the photographic materials and other associated products than the cameras themselves. The company name was later changed to Konishiroku. In 1987, the name was changed finally to "Konica", however that name had first appeared on a camera as early as 1947 as a combination of "Konishiroku" and "Camera".

Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.

Konica Minolta and More

Why RTmetrics™?

• Efficiency in process of hypothesis validation and web site improvement
• Unify reports produced for multiple companies/branches
• Reduction in total operations costs
• Increase in operations efficiency
• No longer need to touch web servers
• Analysis methods remain unchanged even when sites are renewed

Rotech Health Care on Managed Methods

Customer Profile - Rotech Health Care Systems (NASDAQ: ROHI) provides health care services through a variety of health care providers. As they began to move towards a more service-oriented applications there was a need for management of these services. Rotech SOA infrastructure included both SOAP based and REST style web services. After looking at other products they chose JaxView as the cost-effective solution from Managed Methods. JaxView was one of the only tools in the market that could provide management support for both types of Web services.

Vendor Profile - Managed Methods provides Web services management and runtime SOA governance tools focused on the needs of IT operations, drawing on over ten years of system management experience to build products that fit the dynamic pace and requirements of production IT environments. Based on open standards, their JaxView products are designed for ease of installation and integration into SOA environments. Nearly every aspect of JaxView, from integration, metric engine, alerting, data persistent, and aggregation, is customizable. Whatever stage customers are in with their SOA implementation, JaxView can help with monitoring, managing, and securing Web services.

Background

Rotech Health Care Systems is a national leader in providing home medical equipment, respiratory equipment, medications, and services for home use. More than 4,500 employees of the Rotech family of hometown companies contribute to delivering quality service and the best in professional patient care through more than 500 locations in 48 states across the United States. Rotech Health Care systems is using the latest technologies to provide multiple services to their clients. This includes a move towards service-oriented architecture (SOA) to provide a variety of services to their remote office locations. Most of the revenue generated by Rotech comes from payments received from the use of these services. There was a need to manage these services for performance and availability including Service level agreements set with the clients. This included usage metering and SLA management of these services for charge back to the clients.

Problem

Rotech has implemented many services are outward-looking Web services that their clients use to manage their businesses. Their services include both SOAP-based services and XML based services (REST). They have a need for both metering and performance monitoring including SLA and fault management. Their infrastructure and policies required that the request and response messages information be gathered in a non-intrusive manner. Another requirement was imposed by the fact that Rotech is a Mac computer shop. All their applications run on the latest version of Mac OS X. The Web service management tool should ideally support this operating environment directly.

Solution

After looking at many products in the SOA management space, Rotech chose JaxView. Written in a platform-independent language, JaxView was deployed to run on a Mac OS X machine. In order to gather service message data in a non-intrusive way, JaxView agent stubs where installed on Rotech application servers. The stubs replicate service performance data to the JaxView management server for processing without impacting service load or performance.

The ability to manage both SOAP-based and REST-based services was another key decision factor. The default JaxView functionality for SOAP-based services was easily deployed for the services using that implementation technology. For the REST-style Web services, Managed Methods provided services to extend the existing functionality of the product. A customized agent stub was developed that is called directly from the JSP pages rendering the XML service responses. This enabled Rotech to generate management metrics such as usage and performance for their specific clients that could be forwarded to their main console applications.

The ease with which JaxView was implemented in their environment and the support services provided by Managed Methods allowed Rotech to quickly get the management functionality and data that they needed.

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Let’s Standardize on QoE - Quality-of-Experience (by J. Scott Haugdahl)

Author Profile - J. Scott Haugdahl is the founder and CTO of his new venture, Bitcricket. He was former Chief Technology Officer at WildPackets and holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Institute of Technology. He has extensive experience in the network analysis industry in the areas of speaking, writing, competitive analysis, on-site training and network troubleshooting, and expert systems design and implementation. Industry vertical expertise include 802.11 wireless, VoIP, performance analysis and Apdex (Application Performance Index), and good old fashioned protocol analyzer detective work (including forensics). His past entrepreneur experience includes founding Net3 Group, where he wrote the industry’s first analyzer agnostic expert system. He continues writing his popular blog and can be reached by email at scott (at) bitcricket (dot) com.

There are many management tools that provide metrics in some wave, shape, or form that reflect the end-user Quality-of-Experience (QoE). Typically, there are many transactions that comprise an end-user task. A simple example is a web page that requires loading the HTML, then the objects contained within the HTML – graphics, flash, etc. The QoE is the entire page load, not simply the timing of single transaction.

A more complex example is the time it takes to respond with a new web page after filling out a form and clicking on the submit button. The QoE will depend a lot on response time to transactions in the back end of an n-tier system. Regardless, we need to measure the QoE as the user sees it. Then, more granular tools (such as protocol analyzers and SNMP or system log data) are needed to identify the root cause and fix it.

The problem is that most tools have proprietary methods for computing and reporting the QoE. What we need is a standard way to report the information, much like we have a standard way to report the quality of a voice call with predicted MOS scores (predicted, because computer generated MOS scores are not real human listener MOS scores, but I digress).

The Application Performance Index (Apdex) from the Apdex Alliance is a metric which represents a milestone in application analysis. The Alliance is an open consortium of vendors in the network analysis and measurement industry that develop and maintain Apdex. What many network management tool vendors don’t realize is that the way in which data is collected and computed before applying the index can remain proprietary, thus protecting their intellectual property.

Cybird on AuriQ Systems

“We need to collect and analyze users' attitudes, and from there, improve the content to match users' needs and increase their satisfaction.”

-- Mr. Noto, Cybird

Customer Profile - Cybird Co., Ltd. is a Japanese public company listed on JASDAQ since December 21, 2000. Cybird's business is in development and sales of domestic content for Internet-enabled mobile phones, mobile-phone-based corporate marketing, e-commerce, and cross-media solution services. Its net sales for 2006 was ¥14.8 billion and currently has over 622 employees.

Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.

Business Profile

Established in September 1998, Cybird has been at the forefront of the development of the mobile market in Japan. Their business operations focus include:

• Planning, development, operation, and consulting of websites catered toward mobile devices.
• Mobile marketing and solutions.
• Services to E-Commerce sites that sell products through mobile telephones.
• Research and development for new mobile platforms and mobile Internet solutions.

Challenge

The company entered the mobile market early when the market was expanding rapidly. It benefited from the early growth and it holds the top market position in Japan with 3.5 million users. However, the mobile market in Japan is now saturated. They can no longer count on grabbing new users. From now on, companies must fight to grab and retain a limited number of customers.

According to Mr. Noto, they have to move from “grabbing new customers” to “improving the utility for existing users” and “retaining existing customers.” Up until now, it was more important to produce new content to catch new customers. For this reason, they used to rely on the intuition of individual content producers for determining what type of content would draw more users. Data analysis was not their top priority. However, “From now on, we need to collect and analyze users' attitudes, and from there, improve the content to match users' needs and increase their satisfaction.”

Solution

After searching for a solution they decided on implementing AuriQ’s RTmetrics™ web analytic solution. They found that it was ideal for their needs because of the following:

• Easy installation even when there are multiple servers. No need to set up data for each server as in log-based tools. Can manage multiple servers from a single point.
• Can handle mobile environments. Mobile devices have a variety of screen sizes and thus depend heavily on parameters attached to requests. Log-based tools cannot handle these kinds of data.
• Can get detailed user activities and click streams. So it can understand relationships between different types of content, and can do things like crosssell easily.
• Real-time. Can rapidly modify the content to match users needs.
• Easy to use interface. So setup and maintenance are hassle-free.

Results

By using the information provided through RTmetrics™, Cybird has been able to improve their customer satisfaction by identifying user preference when accessing web content through their mobile devices.

According to Mr. Yamada, RTmetrics™ usage in the future will include “introducing the system where individual content producers can always monitor activities of users to their sites and not just product marketing groups.” With RTmetrics, the product marketing groups are able to overcome the difficulties of trying to watch the activities for each content producer.

Also, for operations of popular sites where access tends to get concentrated, they are considering the use of RTbandwidth™ to monitor performance.

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Florida SBA on Managed Methods

“We like JaxView for its ease of deployment and return on investment especially for a small organization like ours. We now have more visibility on how our Web service environment is behaving in production and I expect we will utilize more of Jaxview's enterprise features in the future as our SOA infrastructure continues to grow.”

-- Greg Mathes, Florida State Board of Administration

Customer Profile - The Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) is a constitutional entity of Florida state government that provides a variety of investment services to various governmental entities. The FSBA manages some 25 trust funds and pension plans used for the benefit of state employees and residents including the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Trust Fund, and the Department of Lottery Funds, among other funds.

Vendor Profile - Managed Methods provides Web services management and runtime SOA governance tools focused on the needs of IT operations, drawing on over ten years of system management experience to build products that fit the dynamic pace and requirements of production IT environments. Based on open standards, their JaxView products are designed for ease of installation and integration into SOA environments. Nearly every aspect of JaxView, from integration, metric engine, alerting, data persistent, and aggregation, is customizable. Whatever stage customers are in with their SOA implementation, JaxView can help with monitoring, managing, and securing Web services.

JaxView as an Agentless Network Appliance

JaxView can be deployed to monitor Web services as a network appliance. This eliminates the need to install message agents on application servers. In this architecture, JaxView is configured to passively listen to network traffic, monitoring packets for Web service requests and responses. It then records the service information and message data for management purposes. This also enables autodiscovery of Web services and can help uncover rogue services in the environment. This truly agentless monitoring option that has very low overhead and minimizes additional traffic on the network. If the proxy server deployment is not permitted or feasible then this is a perfect, low-impact deployment architecture to use.

Dr. Weil on AuriQ Systems

“We're so happy with the way RTmetrics™ is working for us. I think it's an excellent product, excellent service.”

-- Chad, IT manager, Weil Lifestyle, LLC

Customer Profile - Weil Lifestyle, LLC, is an organization founded with the purpose of providing a funding mechanism to the Weil Foundation. Its mission is to be the leading resource for education, information, products, services and philanthropic contributions based on the principles of integrative medicine. Headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., Weil Lifestyle is the owner of the web site DrWeil.com and the exclusive worldwide licensor of distinctive products and services selected and designed by Dr. Weil.

Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.

Drawbacks of Conventional Third-Party Ad-Tracking Service

• Ad-tracking was often slow
• Lengthy process to create a new link
• Long delay time from creating tracking link to link activating
• Links sometimes failed and would not go to the destination site
• Reporting lacked convenient summaries
• No automated email distribution functions

Key Benefits of Using RTmetrics™

• Reduced operating costs
• Real-time, immediate reporting results on newly placed ads
• Tracking new ad requires no change to settings in RTmetricsTM
• Better analysis of data for determining success of website and email campaigns
• Simplified reporting through user-defined summaries
• Daily and Weekly summaries sent via email

Executive Summary

Weil Lifestyle, LLC, the managing company for the popular online destination for health and wellness information, DrWeil.com, saw a need to improve the tracking and reporting of their sponsors’ banner advertisements by better utilizing RTmetrics™ which they had been using for web analytics since 2002.

With RTmetrics™, they’ve been able to replace a frustrating and costly third party ad-tracking service as well as improve reporting efficiency and accuracy. Estimated ROI of the first year was 289%.

KDDI on AuriQ Systems

“A single RTmetrics system can serve a large number of websites without dealing with log-files that spread over many different servers. It reduces operation and maintenance work significantly.”

-- Mr. Sugita, Manager of IP Application Group, KDDI Corporation

Customer Profile - KDDI is Japan's 2nd largest communications carrier and is the only Japanese information and communication company that comprehensively provides all manner of communication services, from fixed to mobile and from voice to data. KDDI aggressively works towards realization of the coming Ubiquitous Network Society through its ability to develop leading-edge fixed and mobile communications networks and services to support them and through the ability to carry out technical R&D at a level unsurpassed anywhere. One fast growing business provided by KDDI is co-location and hosting services to corporate customers, which is geared towards small and mid-size corporate customers. KDDI currently has over 20,000 clients.

Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.

KDDI is one of the strongest brands in the industry.

KDDI's service is chosen by its corporate customers because of its high quality and reliability. In order to maintain and to continue improving their brand, KDDI is constantly looking for opportunities to provide value-added services to their customers, beyond its physical capabilities. KDDI chose AuriQ's RTmetrics because of its real-time analysis capability, scalability, and its lack of need for log-files which enabled them to offering a new web analytics service to their hosting customers.