AppDynamics, a leading application intelligence company, today announced the beta availability of Browser Synthetic Monitoring, a distributed, cloud-based, intelligent monitoring solution for programmatically monitoring website availability, functionality, and performance. Browser Synthetic Monitoring enables enterprises to proactively monitor and optimize their websites and web applications from locations around the globe, using real web browsers, to detect and troubleshoot availability and performance issues before they impact actual users. It joins Browser Real-User Monitoring and Mobile Real-User Monitoring to form AppDynamics’ comprehensive EndUser Monitoring solution.

Browser Synthetic Monitoring is designed to give website and web application owners the confidence that their site or application is available 24/7 for users in any geography. It programmatically simulates end-user requests, in real browsers, to proactively uncover performance issues, independently of realuser load, before users are affected. Its automatic, dynamic performance baselining also makes it highly useful for building, measuring and enforcing service-level agreements, and to improve error reporting.

With more than two dozen points of presence around the globe, Browser Synthetic Monitoring enables enterprises to test their sites and applications from their most important geographies. Because it is cloud-based, infrastructure costs are not a factor and capacity can be spun up or down as needed. This gives enterprises complete flexibility to schedule Browser Synthetic Monitoring at whatever dates, times, windows and scale suits their strategic and budget needs.

The new Browser Synthetic Monitoring solution is built with the highly regarded, open source WebPageTest technology. Unlike some other solutions, it uses real, not simulated, web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, for the most accurate representation of how users experience a site or application. When a failure or error is detected, an automatic re-test can be initiated to eliminate false positive notifications. If a true problem is identified, the solution offers the ability to quickly drill down and identify root causes.

“Browser Synthetic Monitoring gives a view of availability and performance that is independent of the factors that can impact real-user monitoring,” said AppDynamics Founder and CEO, Jyoti Bansal. “It’s a more controlled environment, which makes it particularly useful not just for determining ongoing availability, but for benchmarking third-party performance, internal and external SLAs, and KPI goals. When used in tandem with AppDynamics Real-User Monitoring, it provides comprehensive insight into web performance and how to optimize it.”