There are a lot of metrics associated with the PaaS industry that can help gauge your cloud computing platform’s performance. One of the most commonly used metrics is based on server speed or cost. Still, these days more organizations in the enterprise space are looking towards other measures than raw server power to gauge their success. If you’re a small or medium-sized business, these metrics may not be as telling when measuring your success. In addition, you will likely have a limited number of servers overall, so seeing your platform’s performance in real-time may be difficult. However, it is still essential to know the benchmarks for your cloud platform so you can compare against them and make improvements over time on the back end. Here are PaaS metrics and benchmarks to measure success.
1. Application Delivery Time
This metric is the time it takes to deliver an application from your platform. This is most commonly measured using a load test that can either be backward or forward-looking. A backload test tells you how long it took to deliver an application related to the first request. After making the first one, the forward’s load test tells you how long it took per request.
Successful delivery of an application in the cloud environment should take less than 2 seconds. Applications that take longer than 2 seconds to deliver either suffer from bottlenecks or have performance issues.
2. Response Time
Response time is a good metric for those looking to measure this particular metric in real-time. This metric involves the time it takes to get an application from your platform to the user on the other side of the world or local office. Consider connection latency, network issues, and other variables affecting this metric when measuring response times. A successful response time from your platform should be less than 1 second.
3. Error Rate
This metric is measured in the number of errors encountered per second when using your platform. This metric is used to gauge how much time is spent on fixing or troubleshooting problems with your cloud application. If you are experiencing lots of errors regularly, you should resolve the issues and improve performance moving forward. For example, if you are experiencing an application crash regularly, you should work with your developers to identify the cause of the bug and fix it as soon as possible.
4. Throughput
Throughput is similar to performance but differs in its metrics. This metric measures how fast your cloud platform can respond to a request made by a user. For example, if a user sends out a request and then sends out another request 15 seconds later, how long did it take to get the initial response? If you can measure throughput in real time and compare it with historical data, you will track the performance delivered regularly. This can help you see what improvements are needed overall.
5. Concurrency
Concurrency measures how many users are on your platform at any given time. This important metric shows how well your cloud platform can scale to meet demand. Monitoring this metric can help you understand peak times for your application to plan for future growth. This metric should be monitored regularly and compared against historical data to determine if your cloud environment can meet the demands of your users.
6. Page load time
Page load time is the amount of time it takes for a webpage to load. This metric is essential and can measure your website’s performance against other websites or applications. When calculating this metric, it’s a good idea to set up your pages on your site and load them at different times of the day over several days. By doing this, you can clearly understand what peak times are for your website, so you can make adjustments as needed moving forward. The goal is to load a page in 2 seconds or less. Pages that take longer than 5 seconds to load are considered slow.
7. Transaction Completion Time
Transaction completion time is the time it takes from the user’s initial request until they receive a confirmation that the transaction has been completed successfully. This is most commonly used when dealing with financial transactions because it provides an overview of how long it takes for a website to process payments and deposits. A successful transaction should take less than 3 minutes to complete.
8. PaaS Error Rates
This metric measures how many errors are encountered when using your cloud application. This can help identify areas that need improvement, which leads to faster development and better overall performance. This is a good measure of effort and where you must focus on improving overall performance. For example, if your error rates are high, you should focus on updating your codebase and upgrading to a higher platform version.
9. Average Recovery Time
This metric measures the time it takes to recover from an outage or downtime. For example, this metric is successful if your application experiences rest and you can quickly return it online. If your application has a more extended rest period, the recovery time should be measured in hours or days rather than minutes.
10. Latency
Latency is a good measure of how long your cloud application responds to a request or transaction. This metric is most commonly used for financial transactions and can be measured in hours or days rather than minutes. A successful response time should take less than 15 seconds. This metric can be evaluated by comparing it to a similar application functioning as well as possible.
11. Scalability
This metric measures the number of users who can use your cloud application anytime. For example, if you want to count how many people can access your application simultaneously during peak periods, this would be the right measure. This would be an excellent place to start if you see how your cloud application scales under load. This will be the right metric to see if your application can handle more users than it currently supports. For example, if your application typically supports ten users and wants to know if it can be increased to 20 without any problems, this would be the right demographic to measure.
12. New User Onboarding
New user onboarding should be measured by the time it takes for a new user to complete all the tasks they need to start using your application. For example, if your application has a new user onboarding process that takes 5 minutes, this should be measured and compared to the start time for new users. If the process takes 20 minutes or more, you should improve your new user onboarding process to improve overall performance.
13. Retention of Current Users
This metric measures how many users can continue using your cloud application after their first session. For example, if you offer a 30-day free trial for your application but find that many of your users are canceling their accounts after the first week, this metric can help you figure out what’s causing users to cancel their accounts. Suppose many users cancel their accounts after using the application for only one week. This could indicate a problem with the user interface or your application’s feature set.
Conclusion
Performance monitoring is a crucial part of the development process. For example, if you are ramping up your cloud application and want to get the most out of it, you need to monitor performance to identify weak points and implement improvements.