Methodology

The Gomez Application Performance Monitor provides impartial data and trend information about the current state of web, non-web, streaming, mobile, and cloud application performance. It analyzes many dimensions of application performance including user behavior, the composition of modern applications, and the adoption rate of new technologies across the modern application delivery chain. The observations in the Gomez Application Performance Monitor are an aggregated view of data across a wide variety of companies, geographies and technologies. As with any study or report, it is important to assess the data in the context in which it is intended, while also providing a level of insight into topics that are pertinent to any organization seeking to optimize their application performance.

How We Measure
Using the Gomez APM platform, we can measure data using a variety of techniques from a host of vantage points including real user monitoring and synthetic monitoring as well as from a range of perspectives including: Real browsers Real mobile devices Multiple logical and physical layers across the Internet Physical locations throughout an enterprise network Internal data centers Cloud providers This breadth and depth of visibility allows us to analyze data and look for patterns and trends across the entire application delivery chain enabling the Gomez Application Performance Monitor to provide unique observations.

Data Sources
The combination of real user monitoring and synthetic monitoring provides comprehensive performance data, including performance impact of browsers, thirdparty providers, CDNs, cloud providers, the impact of bandwidth, local ISPs and wireless carriers, etc.

Real User Monitoring Real user monitoring collects data from actual users for any application, including Web, non-Web, mobile, or cloud applications. This is achieved through two passive instrumentation options: A lightweight tag running directly in users browsers or native mobile applications. A network probe located in a data center monitoring real user traffic across an unlimited number of tiers.

(For more details on real user monitoring, see the last section below) Synthetic Monitoring Synthetic monitoring provides on-demand monitoring from the perspective of numerous browser or device combinations, including tablets, net books and mobile phones. This captured from two vantage points: Last Mile - a global network of 150,000+ testing locations that operates at the edge of the Internet, on consumer-grade computers behind 2,500+ local ISPs and mobile carriers. Internet Backbone a testing network of 150+ enterprise-grade servers running in high-bandwidth data centers around the globe.

Measurement Frameworks
Data for the Gomez Application Performance Monitor is gathered from over 3,000 enterprise customers around the world. We analyze a subset of real user and synthetic monitoring data across a number of elements including geography, browser type, vertical markets, timeframes, etc. Synthetic Monitoring We analyze a sample population of approximately 3,000 enterprises across a broad number of verticals using synthetic monitoring and load testing tests across more than 150+ backbone locations (data centers and cloud service providers), and 150,000+ Last Mile locations (consumer desktops) The number of distinct transactions (a sequence(s) of actions our network executes against a website) will range from 30K to 68K based on the specific data point. A transaction can be as simple as a visit to a Home Page or as complex as a multi-step shopping cart transaction. Real-User Monitoring Real-user monitoring analysis is gathered from more than 250 sites which are accessed by users around the world. Measurement samples range from 200 million to billions of pages and user interactions based on the specific data point.