Uptime Monitoring

WatchMouse widget 1.1 released (download widget) (2005-12-17)

WatchMouse releases version 1.1 of their Apple Dashboard site monitoring widget.

NETHERLANDS, 2005-12-16. By means of the WatchMouse widget Apple users get direct insight into the accessibility of their own Internet site. The widget can be downloaded for free from the Apple website.

At regular intervals the dashboard widget checks one or more sites from the users own computer. Also, the availability of the site during the last 72 hours is registered. A problem is followed by an alert, which is then verified by all WatchMouse control stations.

Features

• Checks your website from your own computer every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes (new in this release).
• Displays the uptime over the last 72 hours.
• Alerts you in case of an error and...
• Verifies errors from all the WatchMouse worldwide monitoring stations

The new version also fixes some minor bugs. The free WatchMouse site monitoring widget can be downloaded from the Apple website , and requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/watchmousesitemonitor.html

Monitoring API available (2006-05-21)

The initial release of the WatchMouse API is available as of today. With this add-on, our customers and resellers can easily create, modify, and delete rules from their own systems and applications using a REST/XML interface. The API also enables customers to download logs and retrieve uptime statistics of each monitoring rule.

Please contact us for more information and pricing of this interface.

BadBoy Software updates scripting recorder to improve WatchMouse's Functional testing service (2009-01-07)

The WatchMouse Functional testing service allows you to define multi-step tests through a website and replay them periodically from the WatchMouse monitoring stations. This goes beyond just monitoring site performance and uptime, it allows you to verify that your web applications and back end systems really work.
More information on this service can be found on the Transaction Monitoring & Web Application Testing page.

In a co-operation with BadBoy software, who provide a tailored version of their recoder software which allows you to upload the resulting script directly into your WatchMouse dashboard.

Feedback from our "Functional testing" customers has lead to several essential improvements to the BadBoy recorder. This improved version has now been released and we recommend all our customers to upgrade to this version.
The new - WatchMouse specific - version can be downloaded here: http://www.badboy.com.au/versions/BadboyInstaller-2.0-latest_wm.exe

The most important changes are:

CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.7

   #1097: Multipart Forms Incorrectly export Parameters to JMeter Encoded causing Double Encoding

   #1087: Use Follow-Redirect Option in JMeter for More Reliable Export Playback

   #1086: Export Referer and Other Default Headers to JMeter

   #1085: Assertions placed as Children of Requests not Exported to JMeter

CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.6.1

   #1075: Security Update (MS08-052 - Critical)

The full release notes can be found here: http://badboy.com.au/versions/ReleaseNotes-2.0.7.txt

European e-commerce sites poorly prepared for Christmas rush (2004-12-24)

Comparison with US "role models" Amazon and Barnes & Noble

THE NETHERLANDS, 20041223 -- Many European e-commerce sites have made only minimal preparations for the increased number of visitors in December. The congestion caused by Christmas meant that, on average, only one in six web sites was continuously available. This was the conclusion of WatchMouse, a Dutch monitoring service provider, following a survey of over 50 European e-commerce sites. Excessive interest from customers can overload the server or have dramatic effect on response times.

During the past month, WatchMouse – at its own initiative – closely monitored over 50 web sites where consumers can shop online. The survey shows that the availability varied from 98% to 99.6%. "This may seem high, but a score of 98% means that a site is not available for half an hour per day. This makes 14 hours a month, or a week a year", says Mark Pors, one of the founders of WatchMouse.

As a comparison to the US market, two "role models of e-commerce" - amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com - were monitored during the same period. Amazon`s performance was similar to that of the average European web shop, whereas Barns & Noble outperformed most e-commerce sites with an uptime of 100%.

The consequences of downtime are reflected not only in loss of income. Pors: "A website that is not available can cause stacks of work for your helpdesk and, at the end of the day, damage your brand. The problem is that many website owners are unaware that sites are responding poorly, or not responding at all. If they were aware of this, taking action to intervene is simplicity itself: for example, by adding extra server capacity."

WatchMouse has concluded from its survey that more than 70% of the web sites have not achieved optimum accessibility. Given the increasing trend in online purchases, gigantic sums are involved: Online sales will increase by 44% to €13 billion ($17 billion) in Western Europe over the holidays period, compared to €10 billion ($13 billion) in the US (Forrester Research, November 2004).

December is a top month for purchasing on the internet. Pors: "We see response times and the number of error reports increase dramatically in the days leading up to Christmas."

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their internet sites themselves, thanks to WatchMouse’s monitoring service.

WatchMouse has been monitoring internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies across the globe since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. WatchMouse services are available in seven languages, and analyses are carried out through the world-wide monitoring network from a range of locations and networks.

WatchMouse publishes first 'Site Availability Index' (2005-06-28)

Only 9 out of 25 funds listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange have sites with good availability

Of the websites of the 25 funds listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange (AEX), only nine display optimal availability. The availability of the other sites, including those of multinationals, ranges from poor to dramatically poor. Unilever has the best result of all websites, with an uptime of 99.995%. The site with the lowest availability is that of Wolters-Kluwer, with an uptime of 94.80%, which represents more than 37 hours of poor performance, or even unavailability, per month. This was the conclusion drawn from the first Site Availability Index created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications world-wide.

An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level. This percentage is also often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of AEX funds achieve satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites for more than two months. Downtime was said to occur if a site was not available or did not respond within 8 seconds.

The Site Availability Index for AEX funds (www.watchmouse.com/bereikbaarheidsindex/2005/AEX.html) showed that only nine funds fulfilled the minimum required level of 99.9%. These were Unilever, Philips, AEGON, Numico, Akzo Nobel, ASML Holding, Kon. P&O Nedlloyd, Versatel and Buhrmann. Bringing up the rear were IT company(!) Getronics (96.87%), DSM (96.75%), and Wolters-Kluwer, which with a score of 94.80% is over a day and a half a month ‘off the air’.

The Site Availability Index for AEX funds is an initiative of Emerce and WatchMouse and will be repeated annually.

"Very surprised"

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With many sites, we found an uptime that is worse than that of many smaller companies. And this while AEX funds in particular should attach a great deal of priority to their corporate image. A maximum uptime is part of the 'brand performance'. Our theory is that, where there are a lot of people involved within an organisation, there are a lot of hands unplugging cables, so to speak. These companies have complex processes, a great many internal changes are made, and outsourcing of various activities means transparency is often at a premium. This is clearly the case with Getronics, for example. The uptime of the site at the weekend is 100%, but during the week, when people are working, this decreases dramatically."

Pors suspects that the popularity of the sites could also be a reason for poor availability. "Naturally, sites belonging to AEX funds get a lot more traffic than the smaller businesses. On the other hand, this is no excuse; if we look at large online brokers in the US, for example, all achieve an uptime in excess of 99.9%."

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2001. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

In June 2005, WatchMouse was selected by FEM Business as one of the 25 most promising, innovative companies in the Netherlands.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com.

Meerderheid e-commerce sites kan komende kerstdrukte niet aan (2009-05-14)

WatchMouse voorziet wachtende e-shoppers

UTRECHT 20051201 -- Nu de decemberinkopen weer in alle hevigheid zijn losgebarsten, blijken veel online shops regelmatig 'gesloten' te zijn. Dat concludeert WatchMouse in haar jaarlijkse bereikbaarheidsonderzoek van cadeausites. Het Nederlandse sitemonitoringbedrijf heeft net als vorig jaar een onderzoek gehouden onder webwinkels. Slechts drie sites in het onderzoek haalden de maximale 100%. Het merendeel haalt zelfs niet de score die door hosting providers wordt aangehouden als absoluut minimum.

Veel sites zijn maar matig voorbereid op grote aantallen bezoekers. Door de grote belangstelling raken servers regelmatig overbelast. Ook blijken reactietijden van sites dramatisch dalen. Het onderzoek dat WatchMouse in de weken voor Sinterklaas heeft gehouden, laat duidelijk zien dat sites problemen vertonen naarmate er meer bezoekers in de webwinkels verschijnen.

Om te controleren of e-commerce sites goed bereikbaar zijn, heeft WatchMouse de hele maand november controles uitgevoerd. De uptime bleek regelmatig onder de 99.9% te liggen, een grens die in veel service level agreements (SLAs) van hosting providers geldt als minimum. Dat percentage wordt maar door tien van de 25 sites gehaald. Neckermann, Bonaparte en eBay zijn de enigen met een score van 100%. Vorig jaar waren er nog zes sites die een maximale uptime haalden.

De bereikbaarheid van Kijkshop, Bart Smit, de Bijenkorf en Wehkamp blijkt verre van optimaal. De score van Wehkamp, 97.27%, betekent bijvoorbeeld dat deze site per dag meer dan een half uur slecht bereikbaar is.

De grootste stijger was Bonaparte (kleding) die van de 17e plaats in 2004 steeg naar een gedeelde eerste plaats. eBay bleef als enige twee jaar achtereen op 1. De grootste daler was ECI die van een gedeelde eerste plaats in 2005 naar de 23ste plaats zakte.

In het licht van de toenemende bestedingen online kan de economische schade voor een site groot zijn. In de eerste zes maanden van dit jaar is er online ruim een miljard euro besteed, concludeert de Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor 2005. De online bestedingen maken met 37% ten opzichte van dezelfde periode vorig jaar bovendien een snelle groei door.

Consument gewend aan snelheid

"In vergelijking met vorig jaar zijn effectieve maatregelen uitgebleven", zegt Mark Pors, CTO van WatchMouse. "Consumenten zijn gewend aan snelheid op internet. Moeten ze wachten op een site, dan blijken ze zeker voor decembercadeaus gemakkelijk naar een andere site te gaan. Veel bedrijven weten echter niet dat hun sites matig bereikbaar zijn.”

Opvallend zijn verder de sites die 100% halen. Pors: “Twee van de drie blijken in het buitenland gehost te worden. Waarschijnlijk is men in de VS (eBay) en Duitsland (Bonaparte) wel gewend de sites goed te dimensioneren”.

Vorig jaar bleek de kerstperiode overigens nog drukker dan de periode voor Sinterklaas. Om die reden zal WatchMouse ook in de weken voor kerst blijven monitoren. Vlak voor kerst verwacht WatchMouse met de resultaten te komen van die tweede testperiode.

Het onderzoek liep van 1 t/m 30 november 2005. Van 'downtime' is sprake als een site een foutmelding geeft of de HTML na acht seconden niet ontvangen is, en dit vanuit een tweede meetpunt bevestigd is. Het complete bereikbaarheidsonderzoek is te vinden op: http://www.watchmouse.com/availabilityindex/2005/eshops_NL.php

Over WatchMouse

Bedrijven kunnen eenvoudig hun websites controleren door gebruik te maken van de monitoringdienst van WatchMouse. WatchMouse controleert sinds 2002 Internetsites en e-commerce toepassingen van bedrijven over de hele wereld. WatchMouse heeft duizenden klanten in meer dan 70 landen. De dienst is beschikbaar in acht talen en de analyses worden uitgevoerd vanuit een groot aantal locaties in het wereldwijde WatchMouse monitoring netwerk. Eerder dit jaar werd WatchMouse uitgeroepen tot Rising Star in de Deloitte Fast 50. Deze award wordt jaarlijks toegekend aan snel groeiende technologiebedrijven die nog geen vijf jaar bestaan

Minitel Beats the Internet When it Comes to Availability (2005-10-27)

UTRECHT The Netherlands, October 24, 2005 -- Minitel, the eighties precursor to the Internet, is more reliable than most of the top French Internet sites. This is the conclusion from a research by WatchMouse, a monitoring service company for Internet sites worldwide. For two months WatchMouse monitored twenty sites which offer similar information to their Minitel-equivalent, and found that not one of these sites is 100% available.

According to WatchMouse, Minitel still has a future. Many organisations which offer services both through Minitel and the Internet, cannot deliver 100% website availability. Of the twenty sites which were monitored, only three had an 'uptime' of 99.9% which is considered as the 'minimum acceptable'. This percentage is frequently used in service level agreements (SLA's) by host providers. The best performing websites were verif.fr (3617 VERIF) with 99.99%, socgen.com (3615 SG) with an uptime of 99.95%, and alapage.com with 99.92%.

At the bottom of the ranking were anpe.fr (ANPE 3614) with 98.18% and bnpnet.bnp.fr, (BNP 3614) with 97.99%. This makes the BNP site the worst performer, by being unavailable or performing poorly for almost 15 hours per month. For the full list see http://www.watchmouse.com/pr/watchmouse_minitel.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Last month, WatchMouse was voted a Deloitte Rising Star in the Netherlands, as part of the Fast 50 awards; the list of the 50 fastest growing technology companies.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com

Spanish websites suffer from poor performance (2005-12-04)

WatchMouse research shows that 71% of IBEX websites availability is below industry standards

MADRID, 20051121 - Of the top 35 funds listed on the Bolsa de Madrid (IBEX), 25 have websites with poor to dramatically poor availability. Many of the sites are badly accessible or unavailable for more than an hour per month.

The worst site, that of Antena 3 TV, is even unavailable for an equivalent of more than 8 days per month.

This was the conclusion drawn from the first Spanish Site Availability Index created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of IBEX funds achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between October 23 and November 11, 2005. Every five minutes, one of WatchMouse’s test stations tried to access the homepage of the site, which was expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors.

An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level. This percentage is also often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers. There were only five sites which achieved perfect 100% availability - Sogecable, Arcelor, FCC, BSCH and Altadis. The availability of the three worst performers was less than 95%; Acerinox (94.66%), Gamesa (86.54%) and Antena 3 TV with 73.05%.

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With several sites, we found an uptime that was worse than that of many smaller companies. This is worrying as IBEX funds in particular should give a great deal of priority to their corporate image. Maximum uptime should be part of the overall 'brand performance'."

Pors suspects that for some sites, the popularity could be a reason for poor availability. "Some of the sites belonging to IBEX funds will get a lot of traffic. However, this is no excuse; if we look at large online brokers in the US, for example, all achieve an uptime in excess of 99.9%."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing the 35 sites, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/en/availabilityindex/2005/IBEX.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analysis are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com

US online stockbroker beats UK counterpart (2005-12-11)

WatchMouse report favourable on availability US stockbroker sites

UTRECHT, NL, 20051206 -- The websites of US online stockbrokers have an excellent availability record. This was one of the findings in a research by WatchMouse, a company providing monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. Of the 29 US websites that were covered by the research, 18 have an uptime percentage of 99.9% or better, and as many as 10 of these reached the perfect 100% mark.

This makes the US online brokers perform significantly better than their UK counterparts: at a similar research in the UK, just one out of 16 websites researched is available continuously, and five are listed at 99.9%. An uptime level of 99.9% is generally seen as the minimum acceptable level and is often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers or in-house IT departments.

With a growing percentage of the stock market taking place on the Internet, it becomes ever more important to always be available, with the fastest possible response time. Mark Pors, CTO at WatchMouse claims: "Even more than shopping sites, stockbroker sites cannot afford to be unavailable- the stock business is an always-on business"

In order to determine the extent to which the online stockbrokers achieve satisfactory availability, WatchMouse monitored the websites during the official trading hours of the New York (NYSE) and London stock exchange respectively. During a period of two months, October through November, every five minutes, one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations accessed the customer login page of the website, which was then expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors.

The differences are remarkable: US brokers have- almost without exception- a very high availability. Ameritrade Plus, Bank One, Charles Schwab, Cititrade, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Quick and Reilly, Tradingdirect, USAA, and Wellsfargo, were all continuously available throughout the research period. Another eight sites displayed a 99.9% uptime. Not one of the US brokers reported an uptime below the 99% mark. Still, AB Watley Direct, last on the list at 99.04%, adds up to a 1 hours and 20 minutes downtime per month during trading hours.

In the UK the results are far worse. Only Alliance-Leicester maintained the 100% availability, and five others are at 99.9% or up. Two of the 16 UK brokers were even tagged with a "poor availability". Stocktrade is difficult to reach almost two hours per month and Fasttrade a whopping five hours, both during trading hours.

Still, the online stockbrokers have a significantly higher uptime average than other sectors, such as e-shops, government, and news media. WatchMouse reports on these sectors on a regular basis with their 'availability index'.

Online trading trouble

Mark Pors, emphasises the importance of a high uptime for online stockbrokers: "With online securities transactions, the site should be very responsive. After hitting the 'confirm button', you should never have to question whether the order was placed correctly or not. Online brokers understand the importance of being online, and having a fast response time during trading hours."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing the US and UK online brokers, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/availabilityindex/2005/uk-us-brokers.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

WatchMouse was voted a Deloitte Rising Star in the Netherlands, as part of the 2005 Fast 50 awards; the list of the 50 fastest growing technology companies.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com

Spanish e-tailers not ready for Xmas shopping rush (2005-12-09)

WatchMouse research reveals weaknesses of Spanish online shops

Not a single Spanish webshop has an uptime of 100%, and only one out of 10 meets the regular industry availability standards. This is the conclusion of a research by WatchMouse, one of the fastest growing companies in the Netherlands, and winner of the Deloite Rising Star award in 2005.

WatchMouse has been monitoring the main ten Spanish webshops for 38 days, to find out if they are going to be able to handle the Christmas rush. The results of the WatchMouse Availability Index for Spanish e-tailers are poor. "We predict a long wait for internet customers this Christmas season, as Spanish e-shops don't seem to be ready to handle the increased traffic. In a fairly quiet period the performance has already been below standard. The extra volume of online shoppers before Christmas will definitely cause problems, and may even bring some sites down completely", says Mark Pors, CTO WatchMouse.

"According to recent research by the Asociación Española de Comercio Electrónico, retail e-trade in Spain reached some 1.8 billion euros in 2004. So there are big amounts at stake here. If customers cannot get through on a website, or are experiencing a long wait, they often decide to visit a competitive site, causing webshops to lose deals, and even risk losing loyal customers for good."

WatchMouse monitored the top ten Spanish e-tailers continuously from October 25 until December 2. Every 5 minutes, one of WatchMouse’s test stations tried to access the homepage of the site, which is expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors. An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level. This percentage is also often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers.

Of the ten websites monitored, there was only one meeting this requirement: Carrefour. Mercadona and AreaPC were the sites with the worst availability, showing a respective downtime of an equivalent of 10 and 16 hours over the 38-day testing period. In comparison: the main US e-tailers, such as eBay and Amazon all have 100% uptime, which shows perfect availability can be achieved.

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the 10 sites can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/availabilityindex/2005/eshops-es.php
WatchMouse will continue to monitor the performance of the ten Spanish etailers over the Christmas period and will publish its findings in January 2006.

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com.

Spanish banks closed for online business (2006-02-14)

WatchMouse research reveals most Spanish Internet banks struggle to offer reliable access to customers

Madrid, January 10, 2006 - Only one out of 31 Spanish banks offering Internet banking, has a login page available 100% of the time. Added to this, only 5 of the Internet banks' login pages monitored meets the regular industry availability standards.

This is the conclusion of a research by WatchMouse, one of the fastest growing companies in the Netherlands, and winner of the Deloitte Rising Star award in 2005. The company has been monitoring the Internet banking portals of the main Spanish banks for 2 months, and has found them to be well below acceptable service standards.

"One of the primary aims of Internet banking is 24 hour, 365 day access to account information. Sadly, Spanish customers are finding that this is far from the case. One bank's online banking portal login page was even unavailable 11 percent of the time - which inevitably means poor service for its clients", says Mark Pors, CTO at WatchMouse. "Customers of this bank have no guarantee they will be able to access their money when they need to make an urgent transfer."

Of the 31 banks whose sites were monitored, only BBVA's login page was 100% available. An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level, but 80% of the banks were unable to offer that.

Caja Cantabria has the worst performing online banking portal, showing downtime equivalent to more than 3 days over the 2-month testing period (11 percent of the time). Banco Urquijo was second worst, with a total downtime of more than one day over the testing period.

As a comparison: the main US brokers, such as Morgan Stanley, Cititrade and Wellsfargo all have 100% uptime, which provides a benchmark for availability in the financial world.

WatchMouse monitored the 31 Spanish banks' websites continuously from November 6, 2005 until January 5, 2006. Every 5 minutes, one of WatchMouse's test stations tried to access the login pages of the bank's Internet banking portals, which are expected to load within 8 seconds, without any errors.

Besides the Internet banking portals, WatchMouse also checked the availability of the home page of each Internet bank, plus 19 other banks that don't offer Internet banking. Of these 50 homepages in total, none had a homepage with 100% availability and only 11 of the 50 are meeting industry standards.

A complete overview of results can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/availabilityindex/2006/banks-es.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com.

Lazio tops Serie A internet league - Chievo Verona relegated to Web also-rans - (2006-02-07)

UTRECHT, February 7, 2006 - Lazio, AC Milan, Treviso and Empoli FC lead the way in Serie A performance - on the web, rather than the pitch.

WatchMouse, a monitoring service that checks the availability of websites worldwide, spent two months following the twenty clubs in Serie A. If a site is not available or there is no response within eight seconds, this is classified as downtime. The results of the research make worrying reading for some of the world's 'super clubs'.

Only two Serie A teams achieved a 'satisfactory' score - namely more than 99.9% accessibility (or 0.1% downtime), which is seen as the minimum. The 'real' leader of the pack, Juventus, was back in eighth place.

Chievo Verona finds itself adrift in last place. In other words, fans of that club can assume that the club's site will be unavailable for a total of three days a month. In fact their supporters may be better advised to look for another team: with a score of 89.89%, the present number six in the 'real' table, performs not much better than the site of the trattoria round the corner.

The results were not encouraging for Serie A fans. Only Lazio and AC Milan made the 'Champions League' of availability, with scores which exceeded the 99.9% benchmark.

"Of course, scores of 99% look encouraging, concludes Mark Pors, WatchMouse's chief technology officer. "However the internet is an increasingly important communications channel for football clubs. Teams playing at the top level have a supporter base spread across the world, and the Internet is the primary channel for reaching them. Fans wanting to look something up on the internet expect a site to be continuously available. If it's not, they could take their affiliation and custom elsewhere."

Pors is surprised that clubs in Serie A, many of which have a considerable reputation, have not got their house in order on the internet. "For most of the sites, we are seeing an uptime that is poorer than that of many very small companies. Now, more than ever, football is big business with billions of customers. Clubs which fail to understand this will be unable to compete financially or on the pitch in years to come."

A complete overview of results can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/availabilityindex/2006/serie-a-it.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor their own Internet sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has been monitoring Internet sites and e-commerce applications for companies throughout the world since 2002. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in more than 70 countries. The services supplied by WatchMouse are available in eight languages, and analyses are performed from various locations and over numerous networks, using a world-wide monitoring network.

Further information can be found at: www.watchmouse.com.

FTSE 100 websites suffer from poor performance (2006-04-13)

WatchMouse research shows that 57% of FTSE 100 websites availability is below industry standards

London, April 18, 2006 - Of the 100 companies listed on the FTSE, 57 have websites with poor availability. Many of the sites are badly accessible or unavailable for more than an hour per month.

The worst site, that of United Utilities, is even unavailable for an equivalent of more than 5 days per month.

This was the conclusion drawn from the WatchMouse Site Availability Index for the FTSE 100, created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites of FTSE 100 achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between March 2 and April 10, 2006. Every five minutes, one of WatchMouse’s test stations tried to access the homepage of the site, which was expected to download within 8 seconds, without any errors.

An uptime of 99.9% is seen as the minimum acceptable level. This percentage is also often quoted in service level agreements (SLAs) with hosting providers. There were fourteen sites which achieved perfect 100% availability. The availability of the two worst performers was less than 91%; Scottish Power (90.78%) and United Utilities (81.53%).

Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse, stated that he was "very surprised" by the results. "With several sites, we found an uptime that was worse than that of many smaller companies. This is worrying as the FTSE companies in particular should give a great deal of priority to their corporate image. Maximum uptime should be part of the overall 'brand performance'."

Pors suspects that for some sites, the popularity could be a reason for poor availability. "Some of the sites belonging to FTSE 100 will get a lot of traffic. However, this is no excuse; if we look at large online brokers in the US, for example, all achieve an uptime in excess of 99.9%."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing the 100 sites, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2006/FTSE100.php

British online holiday shops regularly closed for business (2006-05-17)

WatchMouse research shows that 79% of British vacation booking sites are unavailable for more than 1 hour per month

London, May 16, 2006 – More and more people are booking their holidays online, but the typical 24/7 travel shop in the UK is not the norm yet. Airlines sites did a far better job in the same period.

Only two travel sites are always up and running; ebookers.com and thomascook.com. Travelocity.co.uk, virginholidays.co.uk and expedia.co.uk have a good uptime of over 99,9%. But the rest of the companies researched perform below this industry standard rate, with the worst performer - the site traveljungle.co.uk- being unavailable for an equivalent of almost 3 days (69 hours) per month.

These are the conclusions drawn from the WatchMouse Site Performance Index for British holiday websites, created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between April 6 and May 9, 2006.

During the same period, WatchMouse monitored the British airlines websites. These perform better generally: 53% was above industry standards and 7 have perfect 100% availability. This shows the airlines realize the need for having a site that is continuously available.

Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse: "Nowadays 24 hour availability is achievable, so there is no need for a site being down. For companies who only do business online, and the website is a single source of revenue, downtime means you have no business."

He continues: “We are now entering the period in which traditionally most of the last minute bookings take place. This means the sites can expect even more traffic, with a negative impact on the site availability. Recent research has shown that e-shoppers are impatient, when a site does not download within 30 seconds, 75% of people take their money elsewhere.* So companies may not get a second chance.”

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing all the sites monitored, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/en/SPI/2006/travelUK.php and http://www.watchmouse.com/en/SPI/2006/airlinesUK.php

*) research by TelecityRedbus, April 2006

24/7 access to bank account not a reality in the UK (2006-06-21)

WatchMouse research shows that 65% of British internet banking sites are unavailable for more than 1 hour per month

London, June 27, 2006 – The 24/7 internet bank in the UK is not the norm yet. From a test of the main 26 internet banking sites, a mere 3 come out with perfect availability. This perfect, 100% availability is achieved only by Intelligent Finance, Northern Rock, and Ulster Bank. Worst performers are Standard Chartered and Citibank, being unavailable for an equivalent of respectively 2,3 and 2,6 days per month.

These are the conclusions drawn from the WatchMouse Site Performance Index for British internet banking websites, created by WatchMouse, a company supplying monitoring services for websites and e-commerce applications worldwide. In order to determine the extent to which the sites achieve a satisfactory uptime, WatchMouse monitored the sites continuously between May 19 and June 18, 2006.

During the same period, WatchMouse monitored the other main internet banking websites in Europe, and found that in France performance was better then in the UK, with over 40% of banks scoring above 99,9% uptime.

Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse: "Nowadays 24 hour availability is achievable, so there is no need for a site being down. Many companies and individuals nowadays rely on internet banking for all of their transactions, which means the internet banking site is the only way to access their funds."

He continues: "It is unacceptable that urgent payments can end up being delayed or stuck, simply because a site is not accessible. Of course these sites get a lot of peak traffic, but this is no excuse; if we look at large online brokers in the US, for example, all achieve an uptime in excess of 99.9%."

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing all the sites monitored, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2006/banksUK.php

Nog steeds ‘werk aan de web-winkel’ in 2006 (2009-12-07)

WatchMouse publiceert voor derde jaar op rij de Site Performance Index voor Nederlandse webwinkels

UTRECHT, 23 november 2006 – De Nederlandse e-shops scoren een hogere uptime in 2006, zo blijkt uit het jaarlijks onderzoek van WatchMouse naar de prestaties van webwinkels in de aanloop naar de feestdagen. In 2005 was de gemiddelde uptime nog 97,69%, dit jaar is het gemiddelde een stuk hoger; 99,43%. Zeker gezien de drukke periode in de aanloop naar Sinterklaas is dit een goed resultaat, maar toch nog steeds onder de industrienorm van 99,9%. Er is dus nog ruimte voor verbetering.

Net als twee jaar geleden in 2004, scoren er wederom zes sites ondanks de grotere drukte, een perfecte uptime. Het betreft de websites van Conrad, Marktplaats, MyLenses, Neckermann, Bol en TakeItNow. De slechts presterende sites dit jaar waren Kijkshop.nl en Mycom.nl met een downtime van meer dan een dag gedurende de meetperiode.

Het hogere gemiddelde komt met name omdat twee negatieve uitschieters van vorig jaar, Rituals.nl en Emmys.nl, het dit jaar een stuk beter doen. Waren deze sites vorig jaar nog respectievelijk meer dan 6 en 7 dagen niet bereikbaar in november, nu scoren ze een uptime van respectievelijk 97,85% en 99,9%.

"Volgens recent onderzoek van Forrester zullen 23% van de mensen dit jaar meer geld online besteden aan inkopen voor de feestdagen dan een jaar geleden. En uit ons onderzoek blijkt dat een aantal partijen zeker effectieve maatregelen heeft genomen om zich hierop voor te bereiden", zegt Mark Pors, CTO van WatchMouse. "Wij zijn blij met deze positieve ontwikkeling. Maar er is zeker nog ruimte voor verbeteringen. Want uiteindelijk behaalt nog steeds de meerderheid van de webwinkels -58%- niet de uptime score van 99,9% die door hosting providers wordt aangehouden als absoluut minimum.”

Vorig jaar bleek de kerstperiode overigens nog drukker dan de periode voor Sinterklaas. Om die reden zal WatchMouse ook in de weken voor kerst blijven monitoren. Vlak voor kerst verwacht WatchMouse met de resultaten te komen van die tweede testperiode.

Het onderzoek liep van 20 oktober t/m 21 november 2006. Van 'downtime' is sprake als een site een foutmelding geeft of de HTML na acht seconden niet ontvangen is, en dit vanuit een tweede meetpunt bevestigd is. Het complete bereikbaarheidsonderzoek is te vinden op: http://www.watchmouse.com/nl/SPI/2006/eshops_NL.php

Over WatchMouse

Bedrijven kunnen eenvoudig de performance van hun websites controleren door gebruik te maken van de monitoringdienst van WatchMouse. Sinds 2002 controleert WatchMouse internet sites en e-commerce toepassingen van bedrijven over de hele wereld. WatchMouse heeft duizenden klanten in meer dan 70 landen. De dienst is beschikbaar in acht talen en de controles worden uitgevoerd vanuit een groot aantal locaties in het wereldwijde WatchMouse monitoring netwerk.

WatchMouse heeft de 'Rising Star' prijs gewonnen in de Deloitte Technology Fast 50 competitie van 2005, de verkiezing van de 50 snelstgroeiende technologiebedrijven in Nederland.

Linux-based website beats Windows-based sites (2007-06-24)

WatchMouse research shows Linux/Apache has less downtime and yields faster websites than Microsoft/IIS

London, June 20, 2007 – Linux websites have better uptime and load faster than Windows-based websites. Research by WatchMouse, a website monitoring company, also shows that web server platform Apache outperforms the Microsoft IIS platform. Therefore, having a Linux website and an Apache webserver platform offers the best choice for professional web pages.

WatchMouse researched the performance of over 1500 websites across different economic sectors in Europe. Most websites in this study are based on either Linux or Windows. Linux offers the best uptime. When looking at web server platforms the overall opinion favours Microsoft IIS and Apache although the latter outperforms the former in this area as well. The research finds that apart from operating system and web server platform, uptime also depends on the country where the server is based.

On average, Windows and Linux are running more than three quarters of all websites. However, there are differences between countries. Poland and Germany favour Linux combined with Apache for their websites while the professional sites in the UK and Sweden rely heavily on Windows/ Microsoft IIS. When looking at the relative performance of the different web server platforms, Linux clearly beats Windows.

One in four of the monitored professional websites have an uptime of 99.9% which suffices for customer satisfaction. Two thirds of the websites have an availability of less than 99.9% which accounts for at least 8 hours downtime per year. According to WatchMouse this is not acceptable.

“Even though the companies in our study seem to prefer Windows over Linux, our research shows they would be better off using Linux/Apache based websites. Research has shown that most web users are very impatient and will wait no longer than four seconds for a webpage to load”, says Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse. “Companies need to realise that website uptime is crucial for a healthy customer satisfaction and a solid client base. Organisations need to become more aware of the impact the choice of web server platform can have on their overall availability and performance.”

A complete overview of the monitoring results of the WatchMouse Site Availability Index, listing all the sites monitored, can be found on http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/

In times of crisis, the sites of Australia's Emergency Services aren't available (2008-03-04)

March 4 2008 – With Bushfires in WA’s Goldfields region & floods in Mackay, Australia’s emergency services are needed more than ever but many are unreachable.

WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian Emergency Services organisations for errors, availability & performance. Only one of the 26 monitored sites was found to have ‘good’ uptime while seven sites had ‘serious user issues’. Another disturbing finding was that during the Mackay floods on the 15th of February, a time when residents needed information and support from their emergency services, Queensland’s Ambulance, Fire (Rural & Metropolitan) and Police sites all encountered serious errors and were unavailable for considerable periods of time.

After a month’s monitoring, WatchMouse combined the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements of a site to calculate its Site Performance Index (SPI). An SPI of ≤1000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1001 - 1999 is regarded as an ‘acceptable’ SPI while an SPI score of above ≥2000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’. Of the 26 sites monitored sites, those with the worst SPI included that of the Australian Federal Police with an SPI 2,990, the Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade site with an SPI 2,756 and the Victorian Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority site which scored SPI 2,604. All of these poor SPI rankings were due to very slow load times.

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. Alarmingly, only the site of ACT Rural Fire Brigade had a ‘good’ uptime result. The majority of sites ranked as ‘OK’ while three Emergency Services’ sites ranked as ‘poor’. The site with the lowest uptime was that of WA’s Ambulance Service with 92.44%.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said “99% uptime sounds great but when you actually calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month! The Emergency Services phone lines could not be down for a day each month so why is it acceptable for the site?. Mackay represents a small proportion (approx. 4%) of Queensland's total population but given that the sites of Queensland Emergency Services struggled during the Mackay floods, we can only imagine what will happen to those sites in the case of a disaster on a greater scale, when 100s of thousands of people attempt to visit."

To view the results of the monitoring, including an SPI graph and information about the WatchMouse monitoring methodology visit: www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_australian_emergency_sites.php

WatchMouse research finds poor site performance for ASX listed companies - Telstra scores the worst (2008-03-19)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 19 March 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian’s largest listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Of the 51 monitored sites, 63% were found to have ‘good’ or ‘OK’ uptime while an alarming 37% ranked as ‘poor’. The most concerning inclusion in the list of ‘poor’ performers is that of Australia’s leading telco provider, Telstra with 98.1% uptime. Newscrest and Alumina sites recorded the worst uptime with 89.7% and 88.5% respectively which equates to both sites being unavailable for more than 3 days during the month of monitoring.

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it is between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”

WatchMouse monitored the sites between 11 February - 13 March 2008 during which one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations attempted to access the homepage of each site every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.

Of the 51 monitored sites, a whooping 26 scored an SPI of above 2,000; the vast majority as a result of very long load times. Mark Pors said, “We’re very surprised by these results. We’d expect Australia’s largest listed companies to place a great deal of importance on having a well performing site; as a company’s site is a tool to providing investors with information and to project a professional corporate image. Instead we’ve found 50% had serious user issues. WatchMouse has been monitoring sites belonging to companies listed on some of the world’s largest stock exchanges for many years and never before found such a poor overall result.”

WatchMouse expected a very large telco like Telstra to have the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site. Shockingly, Telstra’s main site www.telstra.com.au was found to have the worst SPI with a score of 8,018. Other sites with very poor SPIs belong to AGL Energy with 5,129 and Westfarmer with 4,207.

A complete overview of the ASX monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_ASX50_sites.php

WatchMouse finds some poor site performance for DAX30 listed companies - Deutsche Telekom’s site the worst (2008-03-19)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 18 March 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to German’s largest listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Of the 30 monitored sites, 40% were found to have ‘good’ uptime, 43% ranked as ‘OK’ while the remaining 17% ranked as ‘poor’. The most concerning inclusion in the list of ‘poor’ performers is that of Germany’s leading telco provider, Deutsche Telekom with only 97.89% uptime. Thyssenkrupp’s site recorded the worst uptime score of 71.87% meaning the site was unreachable for more than 8 days during the month of monitoring.

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it between 99.89% - 99.01% & ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”

WatchMouse monitored the sites between 11 February - 13 March 2008 during which one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.

Three of the 30 sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’ with SPI scores of above 2,000. These sites belong to Allianz which scored an SPI of 2,336, Hypo Real Estate Holding which scored an SPI of 2,647 and Deutsche Telekom which scored the worst SPI of 3,248. Deutsche Telekom and Hypo Real Estate Holding’s sites both had very long load times and many errors.

Mark Pors said, “We’re very surprised by these results. We’d expect a large telco like Deutsche Telekom to have the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site, instead we found the Deutsche Telekom site operating well below industry standards.”

A complete overview of the DAX30 monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_DAX30_sites.php

WatchMouse Finds Poor Site Performance for UK gambling site - Tote’s site the worst (2008-04-09)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 9 April 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to the UK’s online gambling companies for errors, availability and performance. The testing was conducted on the Grand National race day and for the 10 days prior. WatchMouse anticipated that the sites of gambling companies would perform well to facilitate their customers placing bets on this important event. Surprisingly, WatchMouse found that Tote’s site had serious user issues with a Site Performance Index (SPI) of 2,854 while the sites belonging to Stan James, William Hill and Blue Square only scraped acceptable SPI scores. Additionally, the sites of SkyBet and Jennings Bet were found to have uptime scores well below accepted industry standards.   

Monitoring was conducted from 26 March - 5 April 2008. During, this period one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of less than 1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.

By a significant margin, the site of Jennings Bet was found to have the highest number of errors but when combined with a fast load time, resulted in an acceptable overall SPI score of 1,279 and recorded no errors on race day. By contrast, Tote’s site scored a dismal SPI of 2,854 due largely to very long load times. Slow load times were also the main cause of Stan James, William Hill and Blue Square sites’ scoring barely acceptable SPIs of 1,792, 1,655 and 1,615 respectively.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors, said, “As one in three British adults bets on the Grand National*, we anticipated that the UK’s gambling companies would strive to provide their customers with a fast, error free sites. I am therefore surprised that in the lead up to this important betting event, our testing found the sites of some major gambling companies to be operating well below accepted industry standards.”

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as good if it is greater than 99.9%, OK if it between 99.89% - 99.01% and poor if it is less than 99%. Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”

The sites ranking as poor are those belonging to SkyBet and Jennings Bet who scored 98.52% and 95.57% respectively; meaning the Jennings Bet site was unreachable for more than 32 hours, during the 10 days of monitoring.

A complete overview of the SPI monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_UKbetting_sites.php

*BBC News, 4 April 2008

WatchMouse finds poor site performance for many CAC40 listed companies - Surprisingly, Air France-KLM and France Telecom amongst the worst (2008-05-23)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 20 May 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to France’s CAC40 listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Five of the 40 monitored sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’. These sites belong to L’Oreal, France Telecom, Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Danone. Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Danone's sites were also found to have an uptime score, well below the accepted industry standards.

During the two month monitoring period, one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Performance Index 'SPI' for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.

The poor SPI results of L’Oreal and France Telecom’s sites were due to very long load times while Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Donone’s sites were all found to have a significant number of errors, in-addition to very long load times.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said, “As a telecommunications company, we’d expect France Telecom to have all the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site. We’re therefore very surprised that this research found the France Telecom site operating well below industry standards.”

WatchMouse also reports on site uptime. In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”

Of the CAC40 monitored sites, those with poor uptime results belong to: Air Liquide, Carrefour, Schneider Electric, Veolia Environnement, Danone, Air France-KLM and Lagardere. Lagardere’s site scored 89% uptime meaning it was unavailable for more than three days during the period of monitoring.

A complete overview of the CAC40 monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_CAC40_sites.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor the performance of their web sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in over 70 countries and checks from 25+ locations and networks worldwide (see www.watchmouse.com).

Contact: Mark Pors, mark@watchmouse.com +31302522400

WatchMouse finds poor site performance for some SMI listed companies - Richemont & Zurich Financial found to be the worst. (2008-05-23)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 20 May 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Switzerland’s SMI listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Three of the 20 monitored sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’. These sites belong to Baloise, Zurich Financial and Richemont. Zurich Financial and Richemont’s sites were also amongst six SMI sites found to have an uptime well below the accepted industry standard.

During the two month monitoring period, one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.

The poor SPI results of Richemont and Baloise sites were largely due to very long load times while the SPI result of Zurich Financial’s site was due to both long load times and a considerable number of errors.

Mark Pors said, “I would have anticipated Switzerland’s largest luxury goods and financial services companies to strive to provide their customers and investors with a fast, error free sites as an important channel through which they promote their products, services and build brand awareness. I am therefore, very surprised that this research found these major companies’ sites operating well below accepted industry standards.”

WatchMouse also reports on site uptime. In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”

Of the 20 monitored SIM sites, those with the worst uptime results belong to: Nobel Biocare, Richemont, Zurich Financial, Nestle, Adecco and Synthes. Synthes’s site scored 95% meaning it was unavailable for more than a day during monitoring.

A complete overview of the SMI monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_SMI_sites.php

About WatchMouse

Companies can easily monitor the performance of their web sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in over 70 countries and checks from 25+ locations and networks worldwide (see www.watchmouse.com).

Contact: Mark Pors, mark@watchmouse.com +31302522400

WatchMouse Launches API-status.com (2010-01-20)

New Site Monitors and Measures Uptime of 26 Popular API and Cloud Services Websites; Report Reveals Amazon, Google and Yahoo Among the Best and Vimeo, foursquare and Yammer Among the Worst Performers

WatchMouse, a global industry leader in self-service website and application performance monitoring, announced the launch today of API-status.com, a new dedicated website for monitoring and measuring the real time availability and performance of the public APIs of 26 heavily trafficked, popular “cloud computing” mega web services including: Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, SalesForce, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Wikipedia and others.

API-status.com does a call and check for a valid result on each of the APIs, and if the result is wrong or is received after four seconds, it is noted as an error and unavailable. The percentage of availability or uptime is based on the number of errors reported; details on API-status.com include a seven-day history along with a 24-hour glance and performance indication by country.

"Nearly all websites nowadays include information from outside sources such as maps or social media feeds. It impacts millions of websites worldwide if these services and systems are slow or down and can invoke a global domino effect of breakages and slowness," states Mark Pors, CTO and co-founder of WatchMouse. "The four-second limit on the response time may seem strict, but it is actually a long time, especially when the (mash-up) sites need to do multiple API calls to present a complete page to the visitor."

According to a recent report produced by Forrester Research and Akamai, two seconds was revealed as the new threshold of acceptability for e-commerce web page response times.

30-Day Report Card and Methodology

WatchMouse monitored the availability of 26 API/cloud web services during the period of December 16, 2009 to January 16, 2010. The results found that Yammer API had the lowest availability with 96.06 percent uptime and Amazon, Google Maps, Google Search, last.fm, and Yahoo Maps with the highest availability with 100 percent uptime. In accordance with industry standards, availability of greater than or equal to 99.9 percent is regarded as "good" while anything below 99 percent is regarded as "poor" site uptime. The methodology for testing the sites includes one simple API call and check for a valid result. This typically means an authentication action for most APIs, including a login, followed by a search or listing action, plus a check of the expected result action. The expected result can immediately return as an error or if the expected result action is reported after four seconds, it is also logged as an error. These errors are used to create the percentage of availability or uptime for each of the sites. Each site is checked in real time using the WatchMouse Public Status Pages tool, which can be used to measure and report the availability of any public website. Companies use the tool, which is hosted on the Amazon platform to inform customers and report publicly on the status of their services.

Click here to read the full report of all 26 website services uptime or visit www.API-status.com for real time status and statistical data on each website.

About APIs

An application programming interface (API) is a set of data structures, protocols, routines and tools for accessing a web-based software application. The practice of publishing APIs allows web communities to create an open architecture for sharing content and data between communities and applications. Content that is created in one place can then be dynamically retreived, posted and/or updated in multiple locations on the Web.

About WatchMouse

Founded in 2002, WatchMouse is a global industry leader in self-service website and application performance monitoring. WatchMouse product tests the behavior and availability of websites, services and applications utilizing an infrastructure that includes 42 worldwide remote monitoring stations in 26 countries. Advanced remote monitoring helps eliminate website downtime, allows issues to be identified and resolved quickly and guarantees peace of mind that your website has been thoroughly and externally tested from the user’s perspective. WatchMouse’s web-based products are easily deployed and offer many features including: extensive reporting tools, root cause analysis, automated email and text/SMS alerts. WatchMouse supports Philips, ING, VeriSign and other leading global companies who depend on WatchMouse to provide independent confirmation of both in-house and suppliers’ website performance. WatchMouse is a privately held company headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Learn more at http://www.watchmouse.com.

We guarantee our customers 100% uptime. (2010-01-13)

We guarantee our customers 100% uptime. To fulfill this guarantee, we use several monitoring systems.
Based on our experiences we can say: WatchMouse is REALLY reliable!

Gerwin Scheeve, Lost Boys

Very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care (2010-01-13)

With many hundreds of business clients who expect and deserve over 99.99% uptime, in the instances where we do have service issues, WatchMouse alerts us promptly - every time. This allows us to minimize the impact of downtime and interruptions to our clients. WatchMouse isn't just another monitoring service, the team is dedicated to building on an already very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care

Michael Bloch, Business Operations Manager, ThinkHost, Inc.

Online shops, speed and downtime, getting the facts. (2009-12-07)

These days your website plays an important role in informing potential customers, converting them into customers who want to do business with you, and possibly also conducting the transactions with these customers. In other words: Your business relies ever more on the digital economy, and increasingly on the transactional part of it, the online shop.

These online shops should obviously provide satisfactory performance. Here, both the speed at which they serve pages and their uptime are important. If potential customers cannot reach the online shop, or the online shop is too slow, they are less likely to do business with you now, and in the future. Studies have revealed that half of the people who experience downtime on a website go to its competitor. A majority of online shoppers say performance and uptime influences their choice of online shop.

The amount of revenue that is lost when your website or online shop does not behave properly is hard to quantify. If your website is slow your customers may select a distribution channel that is more costly for you, or they may go to your competitor. Even worse, they may complain about your company to other potential customers. All of this boils down to lost revenue.

A good website is up for at least 99.9% of the time, even though this still represents more than 8 hours in a full year. In a recent survey we found that many websites do not even achieve 99% availability, which corresponds to more than 3 days of downtime a year. As regards speed, if a web page does not load in less than 4 seconds, people start to leave the site, sometimes forever.

How do you make your online shop an efficient experience for your customers? The site must be designed with a strong focus on the customer task. The technology must be no more complex than is relevant. People get annoyed by slow loading Flash intros and complex and slow Flash-based navigation. Take a look at the Google home page; it is one of the fastest websites in the world. On the other hand, you can still use a video clip of a product, if that is relevant to the customer at a particular point in the transaction. You can also use advanced Web 2.0 technology if it makes the user interface more resilient and user-friendly. To experience this, look at Google maps using a dial-up internet connection. It is a really complex user interface, but everything possible has been done to create a positive user experience.

Technology is also important; make sure that you have good service level agreements with all your technology providers. You also want to stress test the site, to see what happens if a lot of people start using it simultaneously. Finally, you should independently monitor the site. When it is time to talk to your hosting company, IT department or website maintainer, it is very helpful to have hard data that reports on the speed and uptime of your online shop.

Peter van Eijk

dr Peter van Eijk is an independent management consultant associated with WatchMouse, the site monitoring experts www.watchmouse.com. He is experienced in setup, management and audits of digital infrastructures. His blog is "Peter's Griddle".