Runtime intelligence

The term runtime intelligence (RI) refers to technologies, managed services and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of application usage levels, patterns and practices. RI is a discipline within both business intelligence (BI) and software development lifecycle (SDLC) management that focuses on precision method-level monitoring within applications and macro-level monitoring across populations of applications, platforms and domains.

Purpose

The purpose of RI as a component of SDLC management is to support better development, support and R&D investment decision making.

As a component of BI, its purpose is to correlate application usage with business results for improved business performance.

Distinction

RI is distinct from application performance management (APM) intended to ensure that application performance levels meet or exceed end-users' and businesses' expectations. APM can ensure that an application meets an internal service level but cannot determine the return on investment (ROI) of that service level.

RI is distinct from business transaction management (BTM) that is intended to manage IT from a business transaction perspective. BTM can provide a transaction and audit log of application-driven transactions but cannot determine the operational or qualitative impact of one application over another.

Representative use cases

• Beta usage monitoring to improve usage tracking and increase end-user opt-in resulting in improved application effectiveness.
• Independent software vendor (ISV) product evaluation process management to improve win rates.
• Customer experience improvement program automation to increase adoption and improve satisfaction.

List of products

• SoftwareStats, released in September 2013, provides developers of desktop (Windows Forms & WPF) applications using the .NET platform with statistics and information about how and where their software is used, including application runs, session duration, abnormal teminations, user location, click tracking and more.^[1]
• Nalpeiron Software Analytics^[2] is a RI product for Enterprise/desktop applications, SaaS Software with over 20 million end users. The Nalpeiron Software Analytics & Licensing Service™ is the modern way to manage your software licensing and analytics infrastructure. Easily retrofit your Software and then Nalpeiron analytics and licensing services capture all the critical elements of a customer's interaction with your products, control and manage that usage and present the information in real-time in a non-technical, easy to use, dashboards.
• Trackerbird Software Analytics^[3] is a RI product for desktop applications, released in Nov 2011. It anonymously tracks software installations, runtime activity, feature usage, exceptions, license conversion trends as well as OS and hardware architecture profiles. Data is presented in the form of real-time interactive drilldown reports and can be broken down by several dimensions including geolocation, language, software version and license type. Trackerbird also includes a direct-to-desktop messaging framework allowing software vendors to send surveys, announcements or promotional messages to targeted end-users.
• DashO also from PreEmptive Solutions can inject method-level instrumentation into Java applications post-build (after compilation) that streams RI data inside SOAP packets to developer-specified endpoint including the Runtime Intelligence Service.^[4]
• DeskMetrics^[5] is a RI product released July 2010. It's a real-time analytics platform that provides relevant information about how a desktop application is being used – bugs, the user path within the application, the most-used features, installation and uninstallation rate, geolocation, the time of day when the software is most used, and so on. This information can help in decision-making processes and development. All the service is hosted by DeskMetrics. The product supports C, C++, Delphi, Objective-C, .NET & Mono, Adobe AIR & Flex and Java applications.
• Software Statistics Service, released February 2010, provides real-time usage analytics about your mobile and desktop software products, including number of software downloads, installations, real uses, abnormal terminations, features/forms/components that are used the most, user operating system and hardware parameters, the most popular software versions, user allocation. The service supports Delphi, .NET, C++, Java, Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, Android, Mac OS, iOS applications.
• EQATEC Application Analytics^[6], released September 2009, acquired by Telerik Inc. in March 2013.^[7], provides application usage and error data streamed to a service hosted by Telerik Inc. The product supports .NET, .NET Compact Framework, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Win32 (C/C++/COM), iOS, Mac OS X, Java, JavaScript and Android.
• Gibraltar Software^[8] ,released July 2009, provides detailed application usage and error data streamed either to a service hosted by Gibraltar Software or to a server hosted by the customer. The product supports .NET applications including ASP.NET, WCF, WPF, WinForms and services.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Dotfuscator Community Edition can inject method-level instrumentation post-build (after compilation) that streams RI data inside SOAP packets to developer-specified endpoints. This functionality is available inside every Visual Studio 2010 SKU except Express.^[9]
• Runtime Intelligence Service (RIS) from PreEmptive Solutions is a RI endpoint that takes RI data as input and aggregates, analyzes and presents dashboards and reports – either as a managed service or as an installed portal.^[10]
• Software Quality Metrics (SQM, also known as the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program) is a set of anonymous data that can be sent back to Microsoft for the purposes of understanding what features of a product customers are using.^[11]
• UserMetrix^[12], released Jan 2011 provides detailed application usage and error data streamed either to a webservice. The product supports java and android applications.
• Little Software Stats^[13] is an open source product released in Mar 2013. It uses PHP and MySQL in order to provide software developers with information such as usage, errors, and geographic usage.

References