AJAXWorld News Desk

Keynote Systems has announced major upgrades to the company’s two flagship Web site performance test and measurement product offerings: Transaction Perspective 8.0 and Application Perspective 5.0. The enhanced versions include the Keynote Internet Testing Environment (KITE), a new desktop-based test and measurement environment that enables developers and testing professionals, from their own desktop, to test and measure the end-user experience of next generation Web applications that include AJAX and asynchronously downloaded content with point and click ease. All Web transactions recorded using KITE can be deployed on Transaction Perspective and Application Perspective measurement computers located throughout Keynote’s global test and measurement network.

Transaction Perspective 8.0, based on Keynote’s True Experience technology, utilizes the most recent version of Internet Explorer (IE7) as the playback engine to measure and benchmark the end-to-end performance and availability of Web 2.0 applications and rich Internet applications (RIAs).

The latest version of Transaction Perspective 8.0 will also take advantage of Keynote’s new Internet Testing Environment (KITE), a desktop-based console using IE7 as the playback engine. KITE is designed to bridge the gap between developers and Web operations teams by embedding within the environment a version of the Transaction Perspective 8.0 and Application Perspective 5.0 measurement software, the same software that drives Keynote’s globally distributed network of measurement computers.

Application Perspective 5.0 is a software-as-a-service and root cause diagnostics product for online applications and ideal for companies requiring high-frequency operational monitoring, rather than the high-fidelity user-representation of Keynote’s Transaction Perspective 8.0 service. Application Perspective 5.0 will also take advantage of the new KITE console, and offer customers advanced emulated multi-browser support (e.g., Firefox, Safari, Camino, Opera) by embedding within the console a real Firefox JavaScript engine to improve the ability to download and execute complex JavaScript. Companies can now precisely measure response times and availability issues of more complex Web sites by interpreting and executing more individual JavaScript elements and enhanced parsing of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Companies can also now measure their performance across emulated browsers allowing them to obtain a more accurate and actual representation of the experience of end users accessing their Web site. Application Perspective 5.0 also includes HTML and header capture, which assists the user with a visual diagnosis in the event of an error.

Keynote’s data visualization Web portal, MyKeynote, brings to life the data that is collected from the on-demand test and measurement network. Through visual enhancements, the MyKeynote portal offers customers the ability to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues with increased control, speed and flexibility. Visual enhancements include RSS feeds, histograms to organize Web pages into performance buckets, and the ability to trend multiple Web transactions and multiple Web page components on the same graph.

With the enhancement of the Keynote Service Center (KSC), usage tracking for the entire company will allow both Transaction Perspective 8.0 and Application Perspective 5.0 customers to have 24/7 access to view their account online, track their usage real-time, and project future spending. Additionally, new flexible agent provisioning will now allow users to easily modify existing – or create new – agent groups, giving the customer increased control and flexibility. 

Enhancements to MyKeynote and the Keynote Service Center (KSC) will be available in early November 2007; KITE and all other enhancements to Application Perspective 5.0 and Transaction Perspective 8.0 will be available in January 2008. For more information about KITE and Keynote’s Web performance test and measurement solutions, please visit www.keynote.com.

For more information please contact Mariana Kosturos, Citigate Cunningham, (415) 618-8786, mkosturos@citigatecunningham.com.