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Global Internet Performance Conference (GIPC) East, NEW YORK CITY — October 28, 2002 — At the opening today of its GIPC East event, Keynote Systems™ (Nasdaq:KEYN) launched Test Perspective™ 5.0, an updated version of its self-service Web site load testing service that delivers increasingly accurate and realistic load test results using a unique and far more accurate and real-world ‘arrival rate' methodology and a more powerful script recorder. The updated version also introduces new flexible hours-based pricing and packaging to meet the dynamic and changing needs of customers and partners, and an expanded load testing infrastructure.
Load testing of Web applications is critical to the success of an e-business. Without conducting capacity load tests, site operators have no way to assure their Web sites can successfully handle expected and unexpected amounts of site traffic. In the past, Web site ‘breakdowns' due to unexpected bursts of traffic, called ‘flash load,' and other causes have resulted in millions of dollars in lost revenue and market capitalization for large e-businesses.
New Arrival Rate Methodology
Test Perspective 5.0's new ‘arrival rate' methodology sets forth a bold new path in self-service load testing. Arrival rate methodology replicates a random distribution of users arriving at a Web site over a set period of time and includes multiple bursts of Internet traffic. It's much better than the ‘concurrent user' model that simply ramps up or ramps down the number of concurrent users on a Web site. The ‘arrival rate' methodology more closely simulates real world arrival patterns of actual Internet traffic, resulting in far more accurate and realistic load test results.
Highly Advanced Script Recorder
Test Perspective 5.0 includes a new and highly advanced script recorder that allows for a variety of scenarios to be run against more complex Web sites. The new and powerful scripting capabilities include support for XML and XML validation, along with the ability to view frame request and response headers and easily parameterize using cookie values. The end result is more accurate and realistic load test results that are set up and provisioned easier.
New Cost-Effective and Easy-to-Use Hours-Based Pricing
The new version of Test Perspective now offers flexible and convenient pricing and packaging with the introduction of hours-based pricing, which is much more cost-effective for customers not making constant changes to their Web site. Customers can now choose between a block of testing hours or purchase a three, six or 12-month subscription to Test Perspective. As a point of comparison, customers can purchase a 10-hour block of Test Perspective starting at $2,500, or a three-month subscription with essentially unlimited testing hours starting at $7,500. With hours-based pricing, customers can now purchase the Test Perspective option that best meets their specific testing requirements and budget.
Expansion of Keynote's Worldwide Infrastructure
Keynote has expanded the capabilities of its sampling and load-generating infrastructure. Test Perspective 5.0 users can now sample the affect on performance and availability of their site from up to 17 geographic locations around the world. This allows 5.0 users to measure and understand performance from the end user perspective based on where their customers are located and also measure differences in network latency across multiple Internet backbones.
Keynote‘s distributed worldwide testing infrastructure allows enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively validate the performance of their e-business applications. By using Keynote's highly accurate ‘wind tunnel' testing services, customers identify system performance bottlenecks, understand capacity constraints and verify functionality through self-service load tests and full service modeling, testing and analysis.
Additional Testing Services Announced Today
Today Keynote also introduced WebEffective™, a new Web site effectiveness testing service, and Enterprise HTML Toolbox, a new Web content and integrity testing service, (see separate press releases issued today).
The testing announcements made today underscore Keynote's commitment to providing ‘Total Performance Management' services to its customers. Total performance management is comprised of complete solutions delivered by Keynote and KeyPartners for benchmarking, diagnosing, testing and managing the performance of e-business applications and systems. With the introduction of WebEffective and Enterprise HTML Toolbox, Keynote has expanded the realm of performance testing to include capacity load testing and now Web site effectiveness and content integrity testing as well.
"Our goal is to bring customers the best Web performance testing services with the highest degrees of realism and accuracy at the most cost-effective prices," said Arnold Waldstein, vice president of marketing and business development for Keynote.
About Test Perspective
Test Perspective is a cost-effective, self-service load testing and diagnostic service that, for the first time, makes it easy for operations, as well as quality assurance and development teams, to test Web applications and continually validate Web site functionality, availability and page-level performance. Keynote Test Perspective is available in two editions: ‘Snapshots,' for continual, high repetition diagnostic testing of individual transactions; and ‘Load Test,' for running load and stress tests using multiple scripts. Both provide on-demand or scheduled self-service testing with real-time results from multiple geographic locations through Keynote's easy to use portal interface. The two Test Perspective editions can be purchased individually or together.
Availability and Pricing
Keynote Test Perspective 5.0 is available immediately. Subscription pricing starts at $7,500 for a three-month subscription. Hours-based pricing starts at $2,500 for a 10-hour block of testing.
Keynote Systems, Inc.
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Internet performance management services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote's services enable corporate enterprises to benchmark, diagnose, test and manage their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall. More than 2,400 corporate IT departments and 18,000 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and cost-effective services to optimize revenues and reduce downtime costs without requiring additional complex and costly software implementations.
Keynote Systems, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
© 2002 Keynote Systems, Inc. The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks. Keynote Systems and WebEffective are trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Editorial Contact:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com