Software analytics company New Relic has been pushing forward in terms of trying to enable developers to build what we might call "data analytics applications". The firm conceptualizes applications that "access and visualize" crucial data streams inside other software architectures and programs to produce the required degree of analytics insight — as opposed to having to build any kind of more dedicated internal analytics infrastructure and accompanying applications set.
The firm now says that its Synthetics product is now officially open to everyone to create free "ping checks" (or start a free 14-day trial) to dig into the performance of business-critical transactions and API end-points using the firm's own scripted browser testing.
The company says Synthetics hands the remote control to real browsers around the world, letting web developers and systems professionals ensure a website, application, or API is behaving as you would expect it to, 24×7.
"Since the beginning, New Relic's DNA has been about measuring the performance of real users interacting with your production systems. This organic usage data is part of the critical systems-intelligence technology companies need at their fingertips to know their apps are healthy and performant," said the firm.
That said, the company realizes that some questions are still hard to answer with confidence if a developer (or any technical operative) relies solely on user-based performance data.
"We heard these questions loud and clear and decided to create a place dedicated to answering them at a glance. That is a focus of New Relic Synthetics, letting you sleep easy because our robots have your back and will proactively tell you when something isn't working," said the company.