Defining The Application Performance Index (Apdex)

NETWORK FORECASTS SEVCIKDefining The ApplicationPerformance Indexrogress comes in two ways—new technolo- The Apdexgy or new methods. Now is the time to shift The Apdex is a numerical measure of user satis-P the focus towards methods over technology, faction with the performance of enterprise appli-and here is why. cations. It converts many measurements into oneEvery year, CIO magazine polls IT industry number on a uniform scale of 0 to 1 (0 = no usersleaders to determine their burning issues. The satisfied, 1 = all users satisfied). This metric canmost recent “State of the CIO” survey, published be applied to any source of end-user performancelast October, lists the top dozen management pri- measurements. If you have a measurement toolorities. The most interesting thing about the list is that gathers timing data similar to what a motivat-that it does not specifically call for any new tech- ed end user could gather with a stopwatch, thennology. Not even a technology refresh. Top man- you can use this metric. The Apdex fills the gapagers are looking for new methods by which to between timing data and insight by specifying aNow a singlemeasure, quantify and improve IT. uniform way to measure and report on the usermetric can tell The top three goals focus on how well IT per- experience.forms: The index translates many individual responseyou if your■ Increase business efficiency through IT-enabled times, measured at the user-task level, into a ...