7th October 2011
Compuware, the US-based technology performance company, today released its one-year average performance results for the world’s top 25 cloud service providers. The rankings allow organisations looking for a cloud service provider to compare and track global performance, and make purchasing decisions prior to migrating to the cloud.
The ranking results were published on CloudSleuth and used Compuware’s Global Provider View application to perform more than half a million tests on the average global response times of the world’s top cloud service providers over the last 12-months.Microsoft Windows Azure (Chicago) topped the list with the best performance, followed by Google App Engine ranking second, GoGrid ranking third, OpSource ranking fourth and Rackspace ranking fifth. The results represent a coup for the less established names of GoGrid and OpSource:
“It’s great to be recognised for our excellence in cloud performance," said Mark Worsey, Chief Information Officer at GoGrid.
“Our customers have high expectations when it comes to cloud performance and availability, and this ranking is just more validation that we are continuing to provide our customers with top-notch, reliable and accessible cloud services to meet their business needs.”
“As a leading cloud service provider, cloud performance and availability is crucial to the success of our business,” said John Rowell, CTO at OpSource.
“The Global Provider View on CloudSleuth helps us measure ourselves against our competition and gives us insight into the quality of service we are providing to our customers, ensuring we meet our service level agreements (SLAs).”
One of the biggest inhibitors to the widespread use of cloud-based applications is user frustration due to poor application performance. Studies have shown that users are becoming increasingly impatient — when page load times approach six seconds, the page abandonment rate approaches 33%.
Users experiencing poor performance will leave with a negative impression of a site and are much less likely to return. High abandonment rates directly impact revenue and ROI, so the ability to effectively manage application performance should be a key component of every organiaation’s cloud monitoring strategy.
“We know that distance, routing and peering play an important role in determining website performance, and it is clear that some providers, such as Microsoft Azure-Chicago, have effectively mastered the combination,” said Steve Tack, Chief Technology Officer of Compuware’s APM business unit.
“Organisations need to understand what levels of performance – i.e. speed and availability – are needed from their cloud-based applications in order to deliver fast, reliable and highly satisfying end-user experiences. Simply using hardware availability SLAs to manage service providers isn’t effective from an end-user perspective. Organisations need to measure the true experiences of their most important end-user segments, including those that are far away, to ensure their cloud service provider can deliver fast and reliable experiences in key regions.”
To view the CloudSleuth blog post on the cloud provider rankings and the source data, click here. To download the source data only, click here.
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