Unfortunately, the tools traditionally used to manage data centers and keep servers up and running are often ill-suited to the world of e-commerce, with its wide fluctuations in traffic, applications that often are not much more than houses of cards (in beta testing stage, typically), and business processes that can span multiple organizations. A Web click, for example, can be registered at one hosting company, resulting in a transaction request being sent to a database in your backroom, which in turn spawns a credit check at the bank and an availability query being sent to your outsourced warehouse.

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Often the best performance management tools are services, such as those offered by Manage.Com Inc. Located outside of your organization, these services can keep better tabs on availability and performance from the point of view of your customers. Some, such as those by Keynote Systems Inc., can monitor your site from more than 70 locations around the world and compare your performance with several competitors.

The enterprise management providers, such as Computer Associates International Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and Tivoli Systems Inc. also seem to be catching on. Most of the management products from these firms -- such as CA's Unicenter and HP's OpenView -- offer features specifically designed for e-commerce and Web servers.

A hosting provider should also take advantage of caching products from companies such as Akamai Technologies Inc. to improve performance for its customers and yours by distributing the load geographically.

Use tools such as Manage.Com to check the performance of your site even if you do not run it yourself. The results you get from such checks come in very handy when your contract comes up for renewal or if you have to convince your hosting provider that you are having problems.

Lastly, nothing drives customers away faster than encountering a broken link or two, so don't forget to check your site for bad links, browser compatibility issues, incorrect HTML and other QC issues.

Find out more

Articles: Online stress test Comparative reviews of six applications that let e-businesses test the performance and stability of their Web sites and applications under a variety of user loads Manage.Com service keeps track of e-business sites Mercury to launch load-testing service Related sites and resources: Entuity Specializes in managing network performance, such as finding faults, inventory, and performance management. Fresh Water Software Used by sites such as AltaVista and Microsoft to ensure that sites stay up and perform adequately. Holistix Provides a range of products, such as monitoring from around the world, or software agents that run inside the firewall and monitor back-office applications. Keynote Systems Enables you to measure how your site is performing compared to your competition. Mercury Interactive Same as above, but is branching out to wireless applications. MSP Association Provides information on the whole Management Service Provider industry. NetMechanic This site's HTML Toolbox tests Web pages for broken links, HTML errors, and the like and then sends you a report summarizing the results. Somix Technologies Provides a range of services, including replacing your internal management solution.

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