An Inside Look at How MTV
Delivers Rich and Compelling
Web Experiences
Rob Roskin, Manager of Operations, MTV Networks
Imad Mouline, CTO, Gomez

Today’s Web Teams
Face Tough Challenges
New Technology
High User
Requirements
Expectations
Performance Recession
Transparency Realities

Today’s Web Teams
Face Tough Challenges
…so how can you succeed?

An Inside Look at How MTV Delivers
Rich and Compelling Web
Experiences
Rob Roskin, Mgr. Operations, MTV Networks

Who is MTV?
▪ MTV Networks is…
▪ MTVN Entertainment Group
▪ Adult-focused programming and online content and
games for primarily male audiences, 18–34.
▪ MTVN Kids & Family Group
▪ Educational and entertaining programs and websites
for kids, 2–17, and their families.
2 17,
▪ MTVN Music & Logo Group
▪ Music and pop culture brands, generally targeting
brands
men and women, 18–34.
▪ MTVN International
▪ Multimedia entertainment brands seen in 160
countries and 33 languages around the world.

MTV Operations
Environment
▪ Team of 8 monitoring 865 tests across 150 websites,
from 2 data centers, 24/7
▪ Flash, PHP, .NET Technologies
▪ Dozens of different 3rd Party Vendors (Ads, Analytics,
Content, etc.)
▪ Ongoing measurements
against external and
internal SLAs

MTV Operations 2009 Goals
▪ Improve site availability to
99.7% as measured externally
▪ Continuously improve web page
and application performance
over base-lined response times
▪ Improve streaming Flash video
performance for end-users

MTV Operations’ Challenges
1.
1 Keeping business & IT/operations aligned on web
performance
2. Making wise vendor and infrastructure
g
investments—especially in tough times
3. Enhancing the user experience with new
technologies while maintaining top performance
hl hl f
4. Always being ready for the next challenge—
MTV s
MTV’s users always expect the latest and
greatest
… so how do we do it?

MTV Operations’ Best Practices
1.
1 Proactively communicate to stakeholders
across the organization

1. Proactively communicate to
stakeholders in the organization
▪ ISSUE: The business, who often initiates site
changes, needs to be aware of performance. It is
h dtb f f i
up to the Operations team to deliver information.
▪ What does MTV do?
▪ Proactively works with business to define
metrics and goals
▪ Customize reports to meet executive needs
▪ Monitor competitors to understand industry
position and share with business stakeholders
▪ Report on performance regularly for both
p p g y
major & minor changes

Customize Reports to Meet
Executives’ Needs
High-level summary reports
Hi h l l t
give the business the insight
they require. More detailed
reports are for operations &
technology managers.
thl

Watch the Competition &
Share Rankings
Is 2 8
I a 2.8 second response
d
time good if competitors
beat us by 1 second?... In
light of our page sizes?
Benchmark reports show
Executives how MTV
performs relative to
competitors & showcases
IT service delivery quality.

Monitor Performance
When Changes Occur
New & heavier
Shockwave.com released
New release with similar
Old Shockwave.com
response times
results

Monitor Performance
When Changes Occur
Larger page delivered at same
or faster speed and with
New & heavier
N h i
improved consistency
Shockwave.com
highlights hardware efficiency.
released here.

MTV Operations’ Best Practices
1. Proactively communicate across
l
stakeholders in the organization
2. Don’t waste a penny

2. Don’t Waste a Penny
▪ ISSUE: Need to maximize performance, minimize
bandwidth usage and get the most out of every
usage,
vendor dollar… all with shrinking budgets
▪ What does MTV do?
▪ Routinely evaluate your investments in
vendors like CDNs
▪ Conduct ongoing capacity planning from the
end-users
end-users’ perspective
▪ Watch the small stuff (persistent connections,
first byte time)
▪ Cache what you can to keep the number of
calls down

Routinely Evaluate
Vendor Investments
Ongoing tracking of CDN
vendor performance lets
us track the quality of
service that we originally
contracted for.

Conduct Ongoing Capacity Planning
in Virtual Environments
MTV’s virtual
First byte time are a key environment allows
health indicator. Times shown
indicator us to add capacity
here are a warning that MTV quickly but requires
servers are “underwater”. constant monitoring.
First Byte Time Defined — The time between initial connection and
receiving the First Packet (a.k.a. first byte) for an object, page, image

Watch the Small Stuff
Shoot for fi t b t times to
Sh t f first byte ti t
be less than 0.10 seconds.
Use Persistent Connections
to save time.

Cache What You Can
100
90
Cache
C h 90% of content
f tt 80
from the origin
f th ii 70
“Break apart” the page to
Break apart
identify what can be cached.
60
50

MTV Operations’ Best Practices
1. Proactively communicate to stakeholders
l k h ld
in the organization
2. Don’t waste a penny
3. Conquer new technologies intelligently

3. Conquer New
Technologies Intelligently
▪ ISSUE: User expectations have increased, and the
business wants t enhance the user experience
bi t to h th i
with the latest and greatest technologies.
▪ What does MTV do?
▪ Have a plan and monitor when possible
p p
▪ Define new metrics as needed
▪ Balance cost vs. reward with new technologies
▪ Keep end-user performance in mind from the
beginning

Have a Plan &
Monitor Where Possible
New questions come up with streaming New technologies may
content like “Is a stream available if it require new metrics
q
takes too long to start-up for end- such as “start-up time”
users?” and “rebuffer ratio” to
evaluate performance.

Balance Performance &
Costs vs. Technology Rewards
Faster, more consistent start-up times
from Global CDN 1 vs. Global CDN 2 are
expected based on the level of
p
investment made in each.
Global
Gl b l
CDN 2
Global
CDN 1

Keep End-User Performance in
Mind From the Beginning
Measure end-user performance
end user
with new technologies and
vendors across geographies to
identify issues & set Service
Level Agreements.

Plan for Tomorrow, Today
▪ ISSUE: Monitoring and managing the convergence
of page content plus video content requires tools
that are competent and flexible.
▪ MTV Challenges
Business Requires Deeper Video Monitoring
▪ Driving for new metric that combines
page load time + start-up time
▪ Combines webpage and streaming monitoring
metrics taken from end-users point of view

Plan for Tomorrow, Today
PLAN:
Work with Gomez to
deploy end-user
dl d
monitoring POC of MTV
Flash Video Player of
Actual Experience XF
(passive monitoring).
( i it i )

3 Hot Topics
1.
1 Availability - What does good Availability mean
today?
2. Virtualization - When getting started with
virtual applications, what should Operations
teams look out for?
3. Caching - What is the most effective caching
technique out there for Web applications?

Hot Topic - Availability
▪ Does 99.999 still exist TODAY on the Web?
99 999
▪ Is the site available if it is accessible? OR
Does a visitor have to be able complete a
task?
Key Takeaway – It matters where you measure
availability from and what you set as success
criteria.

Hot Topic - Virtualization
▪ When getting started with virtual applications
applications,
what should Operations teams look out for?
▪ What’s the best way to measure delivery
quality of virtual services?
Key Takeaway – Virtualization can be great but
companies need to be ready for:
• Increased management complexity
• Incident management improvements to see the
specific causes of failures for end-users

Hot Topic - Caching
▪ What is the most effective caching
technique out there for Web applications?
▪ Does caching at the network’s edge vs.
using the browser make a big difference?
Key Takeaway – Caching is a very effective
technique and caching at the browser is very cost
effective.

Gomez Offers Full Lifecycle Solutions
for Web Application Management
“Gomez has made spectacular progress in the last 18 months…to
become the leader in web experience management.”
Jean-Pierre Garbani, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Tech Horizons: Evaluating Gomez’s Web Experience Management Services, August 2008

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