Riverbed SteelCentral WebAnalyzer [EOL] Reviews

Riverbed's WebAnalyzer is a very specific tool. I found that deploying this to provide insight into Cloud, or SaaS applications was the only data I could provide to support complaints of network performance.

In deploying WebAnalyzer, I was able to monitor two key applications that were hosted externally. One was an out and out SaaS application and the other was an application migrated to a cloud deployment with a third party responsible for support and maintenance. In both cases, WebAnalyzer was the only data I could provide to answer the complaints of performance.

WebAnalyzer includes support for Ajax transactions, while this is invaluable, it becomes difficult to provide a big picture analysis of pageviews AND ajax transactions. The APDEX score is calculated on pageview response times. Some applications use Ajax extensively to imitate desktop applications. This can be confusing if you only look at Pageview times.

1 year.

Installation of the client browser plugin is tedious. For SaaS applications this is the only option as most vendors will not modify their source code to include the javascript telemetry.

None. The collector was deployed on Redhat linux and data shared to a Windows server for the gui and storage.

Clients are manually installed. This makes mass deployments impossible. I was unable to determine where the Riverbed BrowerMetrix configuration was stored to allow a 'Push' through standard package management.

Support was responsive, although I'm unsure where this product fits into a longer term deplyment for Riverbed or a company installing this.

Adequate. Installation was a multi-day affair even with someone who was qualified to support the deployment.

Previously I used Dell's Foglight appliance for RUM. That is radically different approach and not applicable for applications where you cannot access the HTTPS private key. (eg most cloud, and SaaS applications). While I enjoyed the features of Foglight. For Cloud or SaaS deployments without a Private key requires client side instrumentation that BrowserMetrix and WebAnalyzer provide.

Deployment of the internal SSL / HTTP certificates was complicated. The self-signed CA could have been used although this would generate an untrusted alert for users visiting the dashboard in Riverbed Portal. While CA is not an issue is you're ok with the alerts it can be confusing for end users.

Vendor team provided remote support. Over the course of three days we had a continual video conference to perform the install and configuration of the

ROI was folded into Network runtime costs. Time to analysis for complaints was improved to < 24 hours based on the dashboard and ability to drill into specific users or locations.

Use of BrowserMetrix and WebAnalyzer requires someone with skill and experience in Application Performance Management to extract value from this type of deployment. Maintenance includes surveying top url's for domains that are monitored and defining bucket for the performance metrics' storage. If this is NOT done, the overall score of an application can be skewed unfairly higher.

Dell's Foglight APM EUM appliance was evaluated and determined to be unusable for SaaS applications.

I recommend a trial, of at least two applications across 30-45 days be the minimum for determining value in this solution.