Real User Monitoring (RUM)

15th February 2021 | Cybrary

Real User Monitoring (RUM) is a form of performance monitoring that captures and analyzes user activity and transacations on a website or application. It’s also known as real user measurement, real user metrics, end-user experience monitoring, or commonly, RUM. RUM is useful in gauging user experiences, including key metrics like load time and transaction paths, and it’s an important component of application performance management (APM). Real User Monitoring is a form of passive web monitoring, relying on services that constantly observe the system in the background, tracking availability, functionality, and responsiveness.

RUM never rests. It collects data from each user using every browser across each request. RUM works through tools that collect a website or application’s performance measures from the browser of an end-user. A small amount of JavaScript is embedded in each page. This script then collects data from each user as he or she explores the page, and sends that data back for analysis.

By contrast, Synthetic Transaction Monitoring (STM) is active web monitoring. In STM, automated behavioral scripts are deployed in a browser to simulate the path an end-user takes through a website. STM can be used before an application launches to identify bottlenecks or performance issues in an application and fix them.

What Does This Mean For An SMB?

If your company develops applications, you should look at implementing RUM (and STM) to proactively identify, test, fix, and refine user interaction issues with your web applications. If you don’t develop web applications, but rely heavily on them, then knowing these tools exist means you can suggest (gently) that applications you rely on that are having usability problems, be examined with both RUM and STM. That may help the development shop improve and eliminate issues your users are struggling with at your company. If you’re interested in using RUM tools in your business, here are some popular vendors: