October 2013 Summaries

The new feature of histograms and percentiles brings a more detailed view of web application performance by providing the ability to see response times at different levels, including averages, histograms, and percentiles. This allows developers to identify outliers and pinpoint specific transactions causing poor performance, enabling them to make data-driven decisions to optimize their application's performance. The feature is now available for all customers, with histograms and percentiles being free and accessible on both individual web transactions and overview pages.

A new feature introducing histograms and percentiles is now available to provide a more detailed analysis of web application performance by allowing users to see which transactions are responsible for slow outlier performance. Unlike averages, which can be skewed by outliers, percentile charts show the average, median, 95th, and 99th percentiles, helping users identify issues like caching problems that affect specific customer segments. Histograms offer insights into the distribution of response times, enabling users to investigate the details of specific transactions. These tools are free for all customers and can be accessed for both individual web transactions and overview pages, although app-level support requires an agent upgrade. The author, Takuko Takezawa, a Solution Consultant at New Relic, emphasizes that the views expressed are personal and not representative of New Relic's official stance.

The Cloud Foundry team has been working to make its Platform-as-a-Service platform more user-friendly and recently published a blog post about using New Relic for monitoring cloud-based applications. The deployment model of Cloud Foundry is based on buildpacks, which are stacks of software that applications can take advantage of and depend on. For Java applications, the Java buildpack includes the New Relic agent automatically, making it easy to provision and bind New Relic to applications in just a few commands or clicks. The team emphasizes the importance of separating production, testing, and development environments, allowing users to gain unique insights into their application's performance and behavior across all three environments. The blog post provides more details on using New Relic with Cloud Foundry, while a short video demo showcases the ease of deployment and setup.

Cloud Foundry has collaborated with New Relic to simplify the monitoring of applications deployed on its Platform-as-a-Service by incorporating New Relic into its Java buildpack, allowing for easy integration and performance tracking across development, testing, and production environments. This integration enables developers to quickly bind New Relic to their Java applications with minimal effort, providing immediate insights into application performance through New Relic's monitoring tools. The blog post encourages users to explore the benefits of this setup, offering a video demonstration to illustrate the ease and effectiveness of deploying applications on Cloud Foundry with New Relic, while also highlighting additional resources for cloud optimization and monitoring success stories.

Patrick from New Relic outlines a marketing strategy that combines product trials with promotional incentives, specifically offering free themed t-shirts to encourage the deployment of their software. Since launching the campaign in January 2012, they have distributed 75,000 t-shirts globally, leveraging the appeal of data-themed apparel to boost user engagement. Despite minor fraud incidents, the campaign has largely succeeded, earning a marketing award for its innovative use of APIs to integrate marketing automation with CRM and fulfillment systems. The initiative is fully automated, ensuring that new users receive their t-shirts upon deploying the software, with options to choose from various designs like "Data Nerd" and "Nerd Life."