How to Proceed When 1000 Call Agents Tell You, "My Computer Is Slow": Creating a User Experience Monitoring System

Once users have figured out that their computers are slow, there is an uphill battle to improve the performance and at the same time lose that slowness image. In this talk I will report on the development of a Perl-based system for passive application monitoring for a large Swiss telecom company. The system keeps track of hundreds of different performance metrics. Running on over 1,000 client workstations, several gigabytes of performance data are gathered each week and stored in a central PostgreSQL database. An Ajax-enabled Web application allows users to explore, compare, and investigate performance data. Hear how investigating performance problems has turned from random guesswork into a clearly defined process, based on objective measurements rather than rumors.