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Tag: user experience

  • Dynatrace Adds Synthetic Tests to Validate App Experiences

    Dynatrace Adds Synthetic Tests to Validate App Experiences

    Dynatrace today extended the application release management capabilities it provides to include synthetic tests for validating and assuring user experiences.

    Saif Gunja, director of product marketing for Dynatrace, said the user experience validation and user experience assurance (UXA) capability spans everything from application availability and performance to actual engagement with specific features based on the service level objectives (SLOs) defined by a DevOps team.

    Dynatrace views application release management as an extension of its observability platform, said Gunja. While application release management has historically been viewed as an extension of a continuous delivery (CD) platform, Gunja said that observability platforms—such as the Dynatrace platform, which is infused with a Davis artificial intelligence (AI) engine—provide the visibility required to better automate the process.

    In fact, as DevOps continues to evolve, it’s apparent that CD and continuous integration (CI) are becoming more loosely coupled as DevOps processes mature, said Gunja. Most organizations have yet to implement CD simply because it’s been too difficult to achieve. Each platform that applications have been deployed is unique. Dynatrace provides the foundation for automating application release management via the agent software it makes available to instrument applications, said Gunja.

    It’s not clear whether DevOps teams are reevaluating their approach to application delivery, but Gunja noted that much of the interest in the Dynatrace approach is coming from organizations that have already installed the Jenkins CI/CD platform. The number of extensions that have been built and that need to be supported has created a level of technical debt that is unsustainable for many DevOps teams, he noted.

    Many IT leaders concluded they would rather allocate more resources to building applications than maintaining DevOps platforms, added Gunja.

    Most DevOps teams are committed to ruthlessly automating as many IT processes as possible. Observability has always been a core DevOps tenet in pursuit of that goal. Applications that are not instrumented can be programmatically managed. The issue is that providing observability isn’t enough—DevOps teams need to be able to take actions across the entire software development life cycle based on the data collected by the observability platform, said Gunja.

    Obviously, it’s still early days as far as observability is concerned. While application performance management (APM) platforms have been employed for decades, it’s only recently that observability platforms capable of correlating application and IT infrastructure data have emerged. Thanks to the rise of open source agent software, it’s also becoming less costly to instrument IT environments. The challenge, of course, is, as always, deploying and maintaining all that agent software.

    Regardless of the approach to observability and DevOps, it’s clear that IT teams will soon have a lot more visibility into their IT environments. The days when IT teams determined the root cause of an IT issue by process of elimination are finally coming to an end. Observability, however, is not an end in itself, but instead is the end of the beginning of a previous DevOps era.

  • Stytch Launches New, Flexibility-First SDK

    Stytch Launches New, Flexibility-First SDK

    Passwordless solutions have been a trend for a while now, improving user experience (UX) while reducing exposure to common attack vectors. Now, Stytch’s new JavaScript SDK aims to make password-free authentication a bit easier by increasing customization and flexibility while offering fully baked authentication out of the box.

    Julianna Lamb, Stytch CTO, said the solution provides dual benefits by doing the heavy lifting of implementation while providing the flexibility to create a powerfully branded UX from the customer’s first sign-on experience. The Stytch JavaScript SDK can offer an all-in-one experience that handles the entire user auth journey with a pre-built frontend component. But it can also give teams complete control over designing a sophisticated and tailored authentication journey. In an era where tech companies chase the ultimate customer experience as their holy grail, this should appeal to teams wanting to improve a customer’s first impression of their brand, Lamb said.

    Multiple Options for a Smarter Front Door

    Like many authentication tools, Stytch’s product suite originally offered two options: One was a standard widget to handle frontend components while backend APIs provided logins. The other option provided direct API integration, in which the developers built their frontend, handled tasks like session management and setting cookies on the frontend and used the API to do things like send a one-time passcode or email a magic link.

    “But we found people really want flexibility when it comes to any solution they’re using,” Lamb said. “They also don’t want to do the heavy lifting when it comes to things like session management. Those things can be complex to reason through and having those out of the box is really compelling.”

    The new SDK decouples drop-in UIs from helper functions, giving teams multiple options. They can place Stytch’s UI components anywhere they want in the product, sculpting the authentication flow to their specifications. As a headless SDK, it can be embedded client-side in the application to handle all the calls to the API, do the authentication, create a session and check its validity. The result: Less backend code to write and less logic to implement.

    Customizable UI flows mean that teams can fully own the UX experience and build a UI that is customized exactly how they want it to look—and they can do this without having to build an internal API to route authentication requests from client to server. Teams looking for ways to make a brand impact right out of the gate can capitalize on this ability by creating a unique user experience.

    “Authentication is the front door to your application,” Lamb said. “Sign-up is the first impression the user has of your app—and the ability to customize it with your brand look and feel so the UI fits your aesthetic is super-critical.”

    Frictionless Flexibility in Identity Verification

    Because teams may have different authentication needs within one product, the SDK can be used in tandem with the core Stytch API to meet shifting needs. Teams could generate embedded magic links via the API while providing Google OAuth and Google One-Tap sign-in options via the SDK.

    The solution also reduces friction by making it easier to not only authenticate users but verify them on return visits to continue the same session. By loading the SDK on the frontend, teams can automatically connect Stytch’s sessions product to the browser cookie, feeding user session data directly into the cookie.

    The Stytch team is currently building out more SDK functionality and frontend components, Lamb said. Given the ongoing evolution of simple authentication tools that meet complex requirements, it will be interesting to see where innovative authentication goes next.

     

  • Why Software Usability Testing Is Essential

    Why Software Usability Testing Is Essential

    Keeping an eye on the bigger picture is important when doing just about anything. This adage holds true when testing software, too. There’s no doubt that the QA testing process for software is essential. It makes sure everything is running smoothly and as it should. But generally speaking, it doesn’t always fully take into account the user perspective. Even though developers, designers and testers all try to keep the end user in mind when building and testing, there is no true way to anticipate and test for the variability of actual user experience in the wild.

    This is why it is essential to consult actual users. That’s where the process of usability testing comes in. Every organization should consider implementing the practice before a software product launch.

    Usability Testing Defined

    Unlike functional testing, usability testing hones in on the user’s experience of a product. It focuses on how an application works in the real world with real users. In-house, it’s easy to test a feature and check a box to say it works. But that’s not necessarily the way an application will be used by every user in every situation.

    Usability testing involves having participants complete a few tasks with an application. Then, depending on how easy or difficult those tasks were, testers and developers can decide which, if any, improvements and changes need to be made. Usability testing helps organizations accomplish three key goals:

    1. Uncover opportunities to improve
    2. Identify issues in design
    3. Learn about intended user behaviors

    Differences Between Testing Types

    Software usability testing is sometimes confused with other similar approaches to quality assurance and control. Let’s look at and clarify similarities and differences between these methods.

    • User research versus usability testing: User research comes earlier in the software development life cycle and actually involves usability testing, but it also includes other components like interviews, surveys and focus groups to identify the behaviors of users.
    • User testing versus usability testing: User testing is put into place to validate a product idea. It’s used to understand how a user approaches a given situation and how a product might help address that situation. Usability comes later in the process of testing that specific product.
    • User acceptance testing versus usability testing: User acceptance testing confirms that a product works as intended; it’s about functionality. But usability testing will get into the specifics of user opinions, expectations and actual experience.

    Types of Usability Testing

    There isn’t just one way to conduct usability testing. There are a few options organizations can choose from based on differing objectives.

    • Moderated versus unmoderated: Moderated usability testing involves a moderator facilitating the progress of a tester through a series of tasks. This gives an organization the opportunity to ask questions during specific parts of the process. An unmoderated approach allows a user to complete tasks entirely at their own pace. This method can be conducted at any time, anywhere.
    • Remote versus in-person: In-person testing gives UX researchers the ability to provide specific devices to avoid technical issues, although it might mean missing issues with a user’s actual device that occur in the wild. It also allows for observing non-verbal reactions. Remote testing, on the other hand, allows users to complete tasks as they might in the real world from anywhere and with their actual device.

    Some specific usability testing methods and techniques that can be used include:

    • Screen/video recording: Gives insight into how long it takes to navigate and click through a website, application, system, etc. as well as tracking non-verbal cues.
    • Usability lab: A dedicated testing location. All variables can be controlled so the focus remains on the testing.
    • Guerilla testing: This is done in the wild, recruiting a few people to do a quick software test. While this can be quick and cheap, you can’t ensure you’re testing your specific target audience.
    • Contextual inquiry: Testing in a participant’s own environment with an interview and/or third-party observation of their use of the product. This allows researchers to know things like what device is used and where and how the application is used.
    • Usability testing partners: These are third-party organizations with testing expertise and access to a broad pool of participants that can be recruited and cultivated based on client needs.

    Benefits

    Usability testing can deliver a variety of benefits to an organization, including:

    • Direct feedback from the target audience
    • Cost savings through addressing concerns earlier in software development
    • Detection of usability issues before launch
    • Real-world testing
    • Unbiased assessment

    Costs and Challenges

    The most obvious concerns at the beginning of the software development life cycle are are development costs and time-to-market. While usability testing can take time and involve costs of its own, ultimately, the practice aims to address those concerns; in the long run, it is more expensive to launch a flawed product with poor user experience. A few factors that must be considered when it comes to the time and cost involved in performing usability testing include:

    • Sample size
    • Gathering the right participant profiles
    • Breadth and depth of testing practices
    • Amount of time allocated to the test

    All things considered, when done right usability testing delivers ROI that more than makes up for the cost and time involved.

    Consider the implications when an application is launched and certain users are frustrated with the experience and are left with a negative feeling toward the brand. Usability testing addresses this concern and allows for issues to be discovered and fixed earlier in the development life cycle. Investing in developing and testing for a positive user experience is always worthwhile and effective.

  • Best Practices for Digital Experience Management

    Best Practices for Digital Experience Management

    The COVID-19 pandemic put digital services in the spotlight. The winners in 2020 and beyond will be those organizations which provide awesome user experiences for online products, services and apps. There is scant room for error, as digital leaders before the pandemic have upped their game even more.

    For example, streaming service provider Netflix’s 2020 Q4 revenue reached $6.64 billion – almost $14 million more than expected – and added 8.5 million paid subscribers. The company had more than 200 million users in the quarter and saw viewership for non-English titles jump 50% during the year as U.S. viewers sought new content from around the globe.

    Companies in more traditional sectors, such as restaurants and hospitality, also grew by investing further in digital strategies. Chipotle’s 2020 revenue increased 7.1% to $6 billion, with digital sales skyrocketing 174.1% and accounting for more than 46% of sales. Target’s digital sales increased 155% in Q4 while Costco grew e-commerce sales by 91% in FY20, as online ordering and curbside pickup became the new normal.

    Digital Experience Monitoring Basics

    To manage this onslaught of online customers and transactions, IT organizations are turning to digital experience monitoring (DEM). DEM is a broad area, but it comes down to delivering the best experience for your customers and employees by monitoring your IT assets and addressing issues that arise before they become problems. DEM allows you to mimic and test the end-to-end customer and worker experience. Such solutions can be used in on-premises data centers or run in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments.

    There are two key methods for DEM:

    Real user monitoring (RUM): This entails using real users’ devices to measure the performance of a page. A script is injected on each page to measure data on page load performance for every request made, monitoring the interaction of an application and the users. The data shows such aspects as how an application is being used and the geographic distribution of users.

    Synthetic monitoring: This technique tests the performance of a page using an automation tool rather than users’ actual experiences. Scripts are used to simulate how a user might move through a web application and then reports are created based on that performance.

    In a recent report, Gartner analysts said DEM products are evolving, moving from a focus on performance and availability to correlating infrastructure and operations (I&O) and business outcomes. Currently, fewer than 15% of digital business initiatives will require I&O leaders to report on business metrics from digital experience; that will jump to 70% by 2025, Gartner says.

    For years, organizations have been using monitoring tools to measure various aspects of their infrastructure. For example, IT operations management (ITOM) solutions track metrics and manage alerts and events for infrastructure hosted on-premises or in the cloud, including servers, networking systems, storage appliances and databases. The data also can be used for historical data analysis and to map out trends.

    DEM is specifically focused on the end user experience, giving IT professionals the visibility to run diagnostics, fix issues and measure performance at each point of contact between the users and the application. Acquiring a new customer is an expensive effort, and a customer can be lost because of a single poor experience. DEM is designed to ensure the optimal experience.

    Getting Started with DEM

    There are two common approaches for implementing DEM:

    Point tools: Domain-specific monitoring tools track and measure different layers of the technology stack, such as networks and applications. The upside to this approach is you get more in-depth coverage from the point tools, but it can lead to tool sprawl, which impairs visibility and increases costs.

    Platform: This approach provides native monitoring for many areas and integrates with other tools, as needed, to deliver a central, unified view that makes it easier to see everything at once. However, it doesn’t include best-of-breed performance or the deepest analysis capabilities you will want in every area.

    An important first step is to identify the metrics and outcomes priorities for your organization. Then spend time researching the proper toolset for the goals you want to achieve. If you decide on deploying multiple single-domain monitoring tools, remember that you will need an integration strategy. The tools will need to easily share data and display that centrally, to deliver a holistic view of digital experience. Integration is also critical for troubleshooting and connecting metrics to a specific business service. You also will need subject matter experts in these technology domains who can ensure that the DEM tool(s) keep pace with advancements in IT infrastructure and development technologies.

    The Future of Digital Experience Monitoring

    The DEM field is evolving, with more parts of the I&O stack coming under its purview. Solutions will offer more capabilities and be easier to integrate out of the box with other tools because the end-to-end flow doesn’t stop with monitoring and collecting metrics. ITOps staff need to take action on critical alerts with efficient workflows and intelligent recommendations. AIOps and machine learning analytics are playing a growing role here.

    DEM can reduce time-to-value for customers and workers, simplify and ease onboarding to new sites and apps and ultimately increase interactions and sales. Advanced solutions can fuel predictive analytics, form a deeper understanding of user behavior to optimize websites and apps in step with user requirements and dynamic infrastructure changes. In a digital-centric world, DEM capabilities are critical to the health and future of organizations in every sector.

  • Early vs. Late-Stage DevOps Testing: The Benefits of Both

    Early vs. Late-Stage DevOps Testing: The Benefits of Both

    Companies that are working toward optimizing DevOps processes have over the past few years adopted a practice of testing throughout the software application design, development and production phases—a practice of continuous testing throughout the product life cycle. This includes shifting testing operations “left,” i.e. beginning testing earlier in the life cycle, to catch any software malfunctions or errors as early in development as possible.

    While shifting testing left is critical when it comes to reducing the cost of late-stage software corrections, DevOps teams must also remember that software malfunctions may arise at any stage in the development process, as well as post-production.

    The Early Bird Gets the (Software) Bug

    Continuously testing software throughout the product life cycle is a strategy used to optimize DevOps processes. Continuously testing software from design to production throughout its life cycle provides DevOps teams with an uninterrupted flow of software testing data. DevOps teams can use this data to inform software design and development based on the performance successes and failures of previous and existing products.

    Shifting testing left—earlier in the software development cycle—enables companies to catch as many software errors as early as possible to avoid potentially costly redesigns in later-stage development. Shifting left was a crucial area of focus for many of the companies featured in the recent “Forrester Wave for Continuous Functional Test Automation” (CFTA).

    Shifting testing left significantly not only reduces the overall cost of software development but also hastens time to market. DevOps teams can avoid a back-and-forth pattern, or context switching, which involves switching between developing various features of the software as they are tested and verified. Context switching to test various software functions also risks fatiguing and frustrating software developers, as they may be forced to repeatedly revisit and redesign certain software features when they could be focusing on more critical aspects of the product. When DevOps teams are burdened with tight deadlines, they may end up cutting corners, creating more risk for errors that may present themselves to the product’s end user.

    Late-Stage Testing: Removing the Rest of the Bugs

    However, just because a software application works in its current testing environment doesn’t mean it is unbreakable. How many times have you seen a product such as a dishwasher or a fridge operate perfectly in the store during a demonstration, only to get it home and discover it doesn’t fit or the power cable doesn’t reach the same power outlet as the old machine? How many times have you ordered a product, even one that you’ve used countless times before, and opened the packaging to discover it was broken or had some kind of defect? In the same vein, how many times have you ordered an electronic device that required a charger or electronic port type that you or your computer did not possess? It’s not exactly the great end user experience product design teams had in mind when they were designing the product. For DevOps teams that neglect shift-right testing, that’s exactly the negative end user experience they are risking with their software products.

    Shifting DevOps testing right, also referred to as “testing in-production,” is the opposite of shifting left. Shifting right involves testing software later in the product life cycle in late-stage development and even as far as production. This strategy enables DevOps teams to identify and fix bugs that may only arise after shift-left corrections have been made. In other words, if a DevOps team uses shift-left testing to catch bugs earlier, they will then go in and correct those errors. But how do they know that more bugs won’t arise in the production environment? That’s where shifting right comes in. In this respect, shifting left and shifting right are critical aspects of a continuous testing strategy that should be used together to perfect software validation processes.

    Shift-right testing also helps to enable a seamless end user experience. A company’s test environment and end user environment may not be exactly the same. When applications are deployed to different cloud or on-premises environments than those in which they were tested, it’s nearly impossible to predict how those varying environments will affect the performance of the product.

    Even if the end user environment and testing environments are the same, it’s an unfortunate but inevitable fact of life that things break. Unless software companies are truly continuously testing their products, which includes production phases, they will fail to identify and fix any bugs before their customers can point them out. While customers appreciate rapid fixes when they point out an issue, it’s a poor substitute for a product that customers never have any problems with. Companies and DevOps teams that hope to perfect software development processes are embracing a continuous testing strategy, also known as DevTestOps, and they should be careful not to turn a blind eye to the post release part of the software development life cycle by ignoring the importance of shifting testing right. While shifting left and shifting right are separate  strategies, they should not be viewed as mutually exclusive and DevOps and testing teams must work together to develop the best products possible while simultaneously eliminating the need for back-and-forth development and testing patterns.

    If companies truly hope to fully optimize DevOps processes, they must embrace a practice of truly continuous testing that spans the entirety of the product life cycle from design through production. Ultimately, this not only enables developers to close the loop on their development cycle to develop more robust, effective applications, but it also provides the competitive advantage of a faster-time-to-market.

  • Design Systems: Development Choices for Meeting User Expectations

    Design Systems: Development Choices for Meeting User Expectations

    Modern software development trends involve design systems and modernization, and if we drill down further, the trend within the trend is about creating better user experiences. This means improving usability, emerging technology and performance enhancements. This is easier said than done. What does it mean for developers?

    Employing Design Systems

    What a designer sketches, a developer tries to replicate, often with varying degrees of success. When we introduce multiple screen sizes and form factors, the experience can vary greatly if the collaboration between design and development is not in sync. To combat this, many modern software development practices are beginning to employ the use of design systems to provide an outstanding experience to the end user and streamline processes internally.

    Typically, a design system consists of UI components and visual style guidelines, both in the form of reusable code and reusable design artifacts. The system could include UI patterns, foundational elements and design principles or guidelines. Many go as far as defining what tools should be used for optimal UI and UX. For example, one of the most widely known design systems—and most used, due to its open source nature—is Google’s Material Design.

    With a design system in place, developers and designers are singing from the same sheet of music. This eliminates many delays and inconsistencies and provides prescriptive guidance for both the visual and functional experience of the app. It allows developers to deliver the beautifully styled, feature-rich responsive experiences the end user has come to expect.

    Choices for Modernization

    For .NET developers, this could mean exploring Blazor, Microsoft’s answer to JavaScript, which allows developers to build interactive web UIs using C#. It could mean diving into.NET 5, which is the next step in building a unified platform, allowing developers to use it to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, watchOS, WebAssembly and more. Or, it could mean getting a jump on .NET MAUI, the welcome evolution of Xamarin.Forms, combining the best of Mono and .NET Core and allowing developers to build truly native desktop and mobile apps for any operating system from a single codebase and project system from their preferred IDE.

    For the JavaScript developer, modernization could mean looking toward Vue 3, which is a faster, smaller and more maintainable framework. Or, it could mean exploring Angular 10 and its warnings for CommonJS imports. Or maybe it’s truly understanding and appreciating the downplayed release of React 17, which now allows multiple versions of React on one page, making it easier to use React with other frameworks. Modernization is all about staying relevant, learning and leveraging the latest the industry can offer.

    Popular Frameworks

    For front-end development, React, Angular and Blazor are some of the most popular frameworks at the moment. Blazor is so new enough that you aren’t going to find anyone with years of experience, but it is a framework that is incredibly adaptable and easy to learn if you are C# developer.

    React and Angular are more mature and with their latest releases provide even more compelling reasons to build your web apps with them. The soft skills—the ability to communicate and collaborate—are some of the most in-demand skills today.

    Regardless of your front-end preferences, the proliferation of frameworks and new versions means that developers have more choices than ever for creating rich, interactive, modern experiences for multiple platforms and devices.

  • Catchpoint Adds Endpoint Device Monitoring Services

    Catchpoint Adds Endpoint Device Monitoring Services

    Catchpoint today extended the reach of its monitoring services to include an offering that monitors the devices of end users.

    Nik Koutsoukos, chief marketing officer for Catchpoint, said the Employee Experience Monitoring service makes it possible to deploy the same agent software the company employs to track application experience on points-of-presence (PoPs) around the globe to an endpoint device.

    With more employees now permanently working across a wider range of geographies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Koutsoukos said the need to monitor individual application experiences on specific devices has become more pressing.

    Accessed via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, Employee Experience Monitoring also provides access to a desktop application that shows both device and network health along with recommendations for resolving issues. That capability provides the guidance many end users who are working from home (WFH) need to resolve issues before creating a job ticket for the IT service desk, noted Koutsoukos.

    Employee Experience Monitoring service also goes beyond merely collecting data from endpoints. It correlates the data collected from the endpoint against the network data that Catchpoint is already collecting from more than 850 PoPs around the world. In addition, it also combines real-time endpoint analytics, global user sentiment data and synthetic monitoring to provide deeper insights into the actual end user experience.

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, IT teams have been inundated by support calls. However, IT teams traditionally have had very limited visibility into the endpoints they are now being required to remotely support, said Koutsoukos. It’s often impossible to know with certainty whether an application issue is being caused by the device, the network or the local data center or cloud service where the application is deployed, noted Koutsoukos.

    Given the probability that employees will be returning to offices full-time is low, it’s clear another approach to manage remote endpoints is required, added Koutsoukos. In fact, as wireless 5G services, which provide more network bandwidth, become more widely accessible there may not ever be a need for employees to return to an office. Internal IT teams, however, will still be expected to troubleshoot application experiences over any type of network, he said.

    It’s unclear to what degree the COVID-19 pandemic has forever altered IT service management. The one thing that is certain is the days when IT teams could count on the bulk of users being tethered to either a wired or wireless local area network in an office are pretty much over. Even after a vaccine for COVID-19 is discovered, the bulk of employees will still want to work from home more often to limit the spread of the virus. IT teams, therefore, must come to terms with a new normal that requires tools to not only help them manage end users but also enable end users to help themselves whenever possible.

  • Nobl9 Ties Business Goals to Observability Data

    Nobl9 Ties Business Goals to Observability Data

    Nobl9 today announced it has made available via an open public beta program a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for correlating business goals against data collected by observability tools.

    Unlike observability platforms that only aggregate metrics, the Nobl9 Service Level Objective (SLO) Platform applies that data to specific reliability targets defined by the business, company CEO Marcin Kurc said.

    Compatible with monitoring platforms such as Datadog, New Relic and Prometheus, Nobl9 SLO Platform calculates uses monitoring data to calculate acceptable rates of error per service threshold and can be configured to trigger alerts and even workflows in anticipation of outages, Kurc said. The critical difference is knowing which metrics are truly impacting customer experiences.

    The platform also enables DevOps teams to create business rules and define “facets” of users based on application experiences required. DevOps teams can identify users who are being serviced poorly in addition to tracking groups of users. They also codify contractual service level agreements (SLAs) down to critical business periods, said Kurc. The Nobl9 SLO Platform is accessible via a CLI/GUI/API for everything, Kubernetes-like YAML SLO-as-code or a sloctl command line.

    This approach also has a significant impact on the cost of monitoring because the Nobl9 SLO Platform makes it easier to identify what data needs to be stored versus deleted, noted Kurc.

    Armed with those insights, Kurc said it then becomes easier for DevOps teams to either determine how to make systems more reliable or lower reliability goals to reduce costs when possible. IT organizations will also spend much less time finger-pointing because the root cause of any issue will be much more readily apparent, he noted, adding the Nobl9 SLO Platform provides access to both real-time and historical reports to enable DevOps teams to achieve both those goals.

    In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a lot more focus on observability than ever. Organizations are relying more on digital business process to survive. The difference between surviving and thriving in this new era will come down to observability of not just the IT environment but also the entire digital business process.

    It may be a while before most organizations fully equate profit and revenue to the performance of their IT environments. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not enough to simply make sure IT environments are available. Customers are judging organizations by their ability to drive a quality experience within the context of a digital business process spanning multiple applications. Organizations that are unable to meet those expectations will soon find themselves being cast aside in favor of those that can.

    Naturally, those requirements will put a lot of pressure on IT teams that often don’t have a lot of visibility into a business process. There is no end of alerts being generated by the system that are closely monitored, but the bulk of those alerts lack business context. Undoubtedly, there soon will be plenty of ways to gain that context. The challenge now is explaining to business leaders now why it’s needed before it’s too late.

  • Vercel Optimizes Apps Based on React Framework

    Vercel Optimizes Apps Based on React Framework

    Vercel, during its online Next.JS Conf event, announced an update to its open source reactive programming framework that adds support for automatic image optimization along with access to continuous Web Vitals analytics.

    Company CEO Guillermo Rauch said Next.js 10 also adds support for internationalized routing and automatic language detection and quick-start e-commerce capabilities.

    Pioneered by Facebook, reactive programming frameworks are gaining traction as the need to build more interactive applications to drive digital business transformation and other initiatives becomes more critical. Vercel makes it easier to build those applications via a managed serverless cloud environment.

    Image optimization becomes a problem for websites because over time successful waves of application updates conspire to slow performance. Next.js 10 gives developers a replacement for legacy HTML and browser image stacks, which support only one image size and type. Developers can automatically replace legacy HTML image tags with image components based on React that load in a progressive fashion, said Rauch.

    E-commerce applications are especially “ripe for revolution,” he said—as organizations increase their dependency on online interactions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are discovering their existing applications are not only slow but also not especially engaging. The more satisfied customers are with an application experience, the more likely they will return to that website, Rauch noted.

    Vercel’s open source Next.js Commerce platform using Node.js 10 adds automation along with a data layer and reusable data primitives developed by BigCommerce to modernize e-commerce applications. Vercel is also in the process of testing a video platform built in Node.js that will be made available as an open source platform.

    Finally, a Next.js Analytics module provides continuous feedback to help developers better understand how their site or application performs. Page rankings on the Google search engine site are now being influenced much more by Google Web Vitals scores, Rauch said, and the analytics module is designed to identify First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift issues that adversely impact the performance of React-based applications.

    Ultimately, the goal is to deliver a new generation of web and mobile applications. Organizations employing Node.js include Apple, Twitch, TikTok, Lululemon, Target, Lyft and Hulu. Companies such as Airbnb, Hashicorp, Washington Post and TripAdvisor also deploy their front-ends on the Vercel cloud platform.

    It may take a while before every company has modernized their web and mobile application portfolios, but at this juncture, it’s now a matter of when rather than if. Organizations that depend on legacy HTML approaches to building and deploying these applications will find that over time, the use of their applications—and, by extension, websites—will decline. At a time when organizations are more dependent than ever on web and mobile applications to remain relevant to customers, interactive applications may soon be nothing less than a matter of survival.

  • Tricentis Applies Visual AI to Improve Application Testing

    Tricentis Applies Visual AI to Improve Application Testing

    Tricentis this week announced it has added visual test design and automation technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) to its Tosca platform.

    Dave Colwell, vice president of AI and machine learning at Tricentis, said Tosca 14 automatically recognizes and identifies visual user interface elements and controls across any form factor to identify the most appropriate tests to run as an application is being developed. That approach enables testing to be shifted further left during the application development process as successive iterations of an application are developed, he said.

    While AI has been incorporated into other AI tools, Colwell said Tricentis is applying the same types of machine learning algorithms that are employed to enable self-driving cars to detect objects to the testing of controls included on an application screen.

    Colwell said it’s now only a matter of time before most developers routinely expect testing capabilities based on visual AI technologies to be included in testing tools. Rather than having to continually encounter the same design issues, visual AI will enable developers to craft applications that end users will employ much faster.

    Given the large numbers of applications that many end users haven’t embraced because of user experience issues, there’s clearly a base of developers who could use some advice from AI tools that have been trained to identify common problems that have affected previous generations of applications. Tricentis is now not only committing to providing testing tools but also curating the content required to train AI models.

    It may take a while for developers to fully trust those recommendations, but the number of potential issues that could be averted earlier in the application development life cycle has significant implications for the productivity of DevOps teams. In theory, at least, the number of applications successfully moving through the build process should increase. The amount of testing required after an application is created should also decline as well.

    Less clear is to what degree the shifting of testing of visual elements of an application might have on dedicated application testing teams. Arguably, IT organizations should be able to devote more resources to building versus testing applications.

    Whatever the outcome, AI is not going away. Providers of testing platforms are now effectively engaged in an algorithms arms race. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly apparent AI will be applied with greater frequency across the entire application development and deployment life cycle. It may take a while for IT organizations to adjust to that new reality, but the fact remains that organizations that don’t incorporate AI into their DevOps processes will be at a distinct disadvantage compared to those that do. Members of DevOps teams would be well-advised to start assessing what manual processes today are most likely to be automated by algorithms tomorrow.

    In the meantime, the overall quality of the user experience should also soon improve—assuming, of course, the AI models being created to test applications are indeed being trained properly.