HP Performance Center

With the advent of Web 2.0 and the ever-increasing need to support globally distributed and mobile workforces with remote desktop environments, you must ensure applications meet end user needs as well as the requirements of the business.

HP Performance Center will help you analyse and validate the performance of your applications against business requirements and mitigate the risk associated with application deployment and upgrades.

Using minimal hardware resources, HP Performance Center lowers the cost of distributed load testing by providing a standard solution that can be managed via the web, providing 24x7 access to a shared testing infrastructure.

With our 9.0 release, you now get a lot more, including:

• Support for Web 2.0 (AJAX) and Microsoft RDP
• Next generation application and protocol support
• Accelerated performance testing
• Enterprise-scale performance testing with vitalization support, as well as broadened extensibility and platform support

Why HP Software?

HP is ideally positioned to deliver your performance optimization solution. We offer: Market leadership — we have a 77 percent market share in load and performance testing (Yankee Group, 2005). A single platform — we offer the market’s only performance platform that includes performance validation, optimization and diagnostics capabilities that scale from simple projects to testing CoEs. A proven solution — HP Performance Center has extremely high brand recognition with thousands of satisfied customers.

	Next-generation applications and protocols
Supporting more than 60 protocols, HP Performance Center allows you to standardise on a single tool that requires a uniform skill set throughout the IT organisation, enabling you to streamline performance testing to reduce your TCO. Newly supported protocols include the following: Web 2.0 and Ajax: Newly added support for Ajax-based applications in HP Performance Center 9.0 release is particularly important for companies that are taking advantage of leading-edge Web 2.0 technologies for delivering web applications with rich interfaces. Remote Desktop Protocol: With support for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), HP Performance Center makes it possible for you to load test applications that run in the context of this increasingly popular protocol. Microsoft .NET 3.0: By supporting the latest version of this dominant protocol— Microsoft .Net 3.0—HP Performance Center extends its reach further and increases its applicability and usefulness for organisations everywhere. Java Messaging Service: With pre-existing support for RMI, CORBA and Jacada, HP Performance Center 9.0 now provides for comprehensive load testing support for mission-critical, enterprise-class Java-based applications.

	Accelerated performance testing
Performance testing often requires significant time and effort, and IT will be tempted to cut corners — at the risk of potential problems down the road. The solution is to increase performance testing productivity — an area in which HP Performance Center has added to an already long list of industry leading features. Improved scheduling, analysis and SLA support: Load testing improvements for HP Performance Center include enhanced scheduler functionality that provides greater flexibility when it comes to creating test scenarios. The solution also supports more sophisticated analytics that enable you to pinpoint exactly where an application failed to meet targeted service level agreements (SLAs). Click and script for SAP and Ajax applications: The click and script functionality in HP Performance Center allows you to generate scripts so that you can spend more time testing and less time scripting the tests for web, Siebel and Oracle® application environments. Plus, HP Performance Center now extends this powerful functionality for use with SAP and Ajax applications.

	Enterprise-scale performance testing
HP Performance Center software is the only enterprise level load testing platform available on the market today and HP LoadRunner software is the market leading load testing solution. Recent enhancements in the area of enterprise readiness make the offering even more powerful and easier to use and deploy as an enterprise solution. Improved security and access control: To support the need of enterprise-wide performance testing, HP has improved security in a number of areas. Enhanced administrative controls over passwords and groups, for example, help reduce the time required to manually prepare a PC system to co-exist in a data Center alongside other enterprise products. New methods of authentication, including support for LDAP and single sign-on, make it possible for users to interact with the performance Center. HP has also dropped DCOM as a communication channel in favour of web services. Enhanced privilege management: HP has made privilege management more granular to better separate local administration of specific projects at the LOB level from global administration of performance center installations. Virtualization support: HP Performance Center now enables you to run tests on VMware in a virtual environment across all supported protocols. With a better read on how your application runs in a virtual environment, you’ll be able to more accurately allocate the required hardware resources, thus saving you money while mitigating your risk. Farm and AUT monitoring enhancements: HP Performance Center now makes it easier and faster to perform application under tests (AUT) for applications and services running on large server farms. Improved diagnostics and better access to all of the monitors supported by HP SiteScope software 8.5, can help you pinpoint performance issues and control costs more effectively. Extensibility and platform enhancements for partners and service providers: In the latest release of HP Performance Center products, HP provides a software development kit (SDK) for HP LoadRunner that will help independent software vendors (ISVs), service providers and partners extend the industry-leading capabilities of the solution and develop unique and niche applications and protocols that are not supported by HP.

	HP Performance Center components
HP LoadRunner software is used more than any other testing solution in the world today. Using custom-generated virtual users, it allows you to drive load, diagnose problems and deploy without surprises. As it drives load against the system, HP LoadRunner captures the end-user response times of key business processes and transactions to determine if service-level agreements (SLAs) can be met. Non-intrusive, real-time performance monitors obtain and display performance data from every application tier, server and system component, and diagnostic probes gather code-level data to isolate bottlenecks down to the SQL or method level. This combination of end-user, system-level and code-level visibility dramatically reduces time-to-problem resolution. HP Diagnostics software, which can be utilized during both load testing and production, isolates application performance problems and reduces the mean time to resolution (MTTR) of your application performance bottlenecks. It provides actionable information to resolve performance problems and complete application visibility across tiers in J2EE, .NET and ERP/CRM environments. HP Performance Center software is an enterprise-class performance testing platform designed to enable either global standardisation and the formation of a performance testing CoE or a performance testing IT shared service. It gives everyone from LOB managers to testers project-level visibility and a collaborative working environment. Efficiencies that arise from centralisation and standardisation, such as common skills sets, common hardware and licenses, and around-the-clock follow-the-sun usage help IT organisations test effectively at lower cost. HP Center Management software is an out-of-the-box solution for managing the business of running a performance testing CoE. It gives team members a project management tool for consolidating demand, tracking and managing projects, and requesting and logging performance tests.

Today, it’s a challenge to keep your mission-critical applications at peak performance and scalability levels as defined by business requirements. You need an effective way to predict system behaviour and performance under realistic stress conditions. In addition, when problems or bottlenecks occur, you need a quick way to diagnose and fix root causes.

To address the challenge of application performance, many enterprises over-buy hardware in hopes that robust processing power and throughput capacity will be sufficient to handle peak loads. This is a costly approach, and ultimately might not accomplish what it is intended to do. The answer doesn’t lie in more servers, processors and routers. It lies in a testing solution that enables IT staff to optimize applications based on expected load conditions.

HP Performance Center helps you meet these challenges with a complete, on-demand optimization solution for your application performance process, integrating performance validation with diagnostics. It provides an enterprise-class application performance testing platform that can be managed via the web, providing 24x7 access to a shared testing infrastructure.

Among other capabilities, HP Performance Center:

• Lowers the cost of distributed performance validation
• Scales from single projects to a full-scale testing Center of Excellence (CoEs) that consolidates hardware, standardizes best practices and leverages global testing resources
• Reduces the risk of deploying systems that do not meet your performance requirements
• Reduces hardware and software costs by accurately predicting system capacity
• Quickly and accurately pinpoints the root cause of application performance problems 

	What is HP Performance Center?
HP Performance Center will help you analyse and validate the performance of your applications against business requirements and mitigate the risk associated with application deployment and upgrades.

	What are the New Features for HP Performance Center?
With our 9.0 release, you get a lot more, including: Next-generation applications and protocols i.e. Web 2.0 and AJAX, Microsoft .NET 3.0 etc Accelerated performance testing i.e. Improved scheduling, analysis and SLA support, Click and script for SAP and Ajax applications Enterprise-scale performance testing i.e. Improved security and access control, Enhanced privilege management etc HP Performance Center components i.e. HP LoadRunner, HP Diagnostics etc

	What are the benefits of HP Performance Center?
Lowers the cost of distributed performance validation Scales from single projects to a full-scale testing Center of Excellence (CoEs) that consolidates hardware, standardizes best practices and leverages global testing resources Reduces the risk of deploying systems that do not meet your performance requirements Reduces hardware and software costs by accurately predicting system capacity Quickly and accurately pinpoints the root cause of application performance problems

	Are there White Papers or Demos available for HP Performance Center?
Yes, visit the HP download center for access to this information.

	How can I find out more about HP Performance Center?
To find out more, you can either visit the HP download center for more information, such as whitepapers and demos. Or, you can contact us via phone or email. An HP representative can answer all your questions and tell you exactly what you need to know about Performance Center.

	How can I buy HP Performance Center?
If you’re interested in purchasing HP Performance Center or upgrading to the latest version, please contact us.

	Why should I choose HP Software?
HP is ideally positioned to deliver your performance optimization solution. We offer: Market leadership — we have a 77 percent market share in load and performance testing (Yankee Group, 2005). A single platform — we offer the market’s only performance platform that includes performance validation, optimization and diagnostics capabilities that scale from simple projects to testing CoEs. A proven solution — HP Performance Center has extremely high brand recognition with thousands of satisfied customers.

	How do I find out about other HP Software products?
To find out about other products offered by HP Software, you can either visit the HP download center or contact us.