Gomez Grows Global Peer Network of Web Experience Monitoring Desktop Computers to 40,000

The Gomez Peer Community is the Industry’s Only Global Network for Website Experience Load Testing and Performance Monitoring at the Last Mile

Web 2.0 Expo (booth #211,) San Francisco, Calif. — April 22, 2008 Gomez, Inc., a leader in web application experience management, today announced that its Peer community, a global network of desktop computers used to test and measure website performance at the “last mile,” has grown to 40,000.

The Gomez Peer community is the industry’s only global website monitoring network comprised of real online users. These 40,000 desktops, belonging to computer users in 154 countries, provide the most accurate data of an end-user’s online experience via different connection speeds, ISPs and geographies. Gomez customers are leveraging its Peer community to help improve the quality of the web experience they deliver to customers around the world, however they connect to the Internet.

According to Forrester Research’s March 2008 “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience” report†, “good customer experience correlates highly to loyalty — especially when it comes to consumers’ plans for making additional purchases.”

Gomez’s unique approach captures the ‘noise’ of real-world Internet conditions, exposing localized web performance issues that impact the customer’s experience — critical detail that data center testing alone may not reveal. In doing so, it has enabled Gomez’s customers like top-tier online retailer Newegg.com to stay close to their customer base.

“As the second largest internet-only retailer in the US, Newegg.com’s business and brand are defined by the web experience we deliver to our customers,” said Bernard Luthi, vice president of merchandising, Newegg.com. “Gomez’s Last Mile Peer community gives us the opportunity to gain insight of how our customers interface with our website based on their location, ISP and connection speed revealing where we may need to make improvements. Monitoring and adapting to our customers’ needs is critical to delivering a consistently great web experience.”

Gomez’s Peer community complements its network of 150 globally-located Internet backbone testing nodes. Together they form the world’s largest and most distributed network for on-demand website performance testing and monitoring. This network powers the Gomez® ExperienceFirst℠ platform and specifically, Gomez’s Active Network℠ XF and Active Last Mile℠ XF website monitoring services and its Reality Load℠ XF on-demand external load testing service.

“Real web users don’t live inside data centers,” said Jaime Ellertson, CEO of Gomez, Inc. “Testing website performance from Internet backbones is a very important and necessary element of ensuring quality web experiences — but testing at the Last Mile completes the picture. The real-world metrics provided by the desktops in the Gomez Peer community help our customers to better measure their customers’ web experience, wherever they do business.”

How the Gomez Peer application works

Distributed much like the SETI@Home project (which utilizes many computers to crunch numbers in the search for extraterrestrial life), Gomez Peer desktop computers are used to run tests that measure the speed, availability and consistency of Gomez’s customers’ websites. Gomez Peers simply download a free and secure application — an intelligent agent that emulates the most popular Internet browsers — which executes these tests quietly in the background when the peer machine is online. One hundred percent non-invasive, the application cannot track the Peer’s personal web usage nor collect any private data, assuring the Peer’s privacy.

 Source: Gomez News