PacketZoom has announced Mobile IQ, a new end-to-end Application Performance Management and Optimization (APMo) platform for mobile apps that can be paired with PacketZoom’s existing Mobile Expresslane technology. The complete suite of tools allows developers to analyze, troubleshoot, control and optimize app performance in real-time. Mobile IQ is completely free and will remain free forever. It can easily complement PacketZoom’s existing Expresslane technology, which boosts app speeds, rescues TCP disconnects, and reduces CDN costs.
PacketZoom’s Expresslane technology has already attracted a number of high-profile mobile publishers like Glu, Sephora, and GOAT. Their SDK accelerates a given mobile app using a modern networking stack break down barriers that usually slow down app performance. The SDK bridges the gap between the publisher and user by cutting unnecessary server round trips, using TCP protocol overhead, and finding PacketZoom servers best suited to particular users. PacketZoom’s technology also emphasizes the “mobile last mile,” where the Expresslane protocol can eliminate disconnects.
Today, the Mobile IQ platform introduces a range of real-time analytical tools that developers can use to better understand their own users, optimize app performance, and trace how the Expresslane SDK is improving user experiences. Developers can track historical and real-time usage trends in broad and granular indices. They can track where users are located and which carriers they are using (and which carriers are most optimized). They can track request failures, traffic spikes, even throughput. Data indices can be pinpointed and magnified, allowing developers to extract raw data and detect trends or unusual results. “Developers can feel helpless with a lack of visibility and control, and are often charged a lot for APM,” said PacketZoom CEO Shlomi Gian. “We’re the only ones providing end-to-end solution enabling and empowering developers. We feel it’s groundbreaking for the mobile space.”
But Mobile IQ doesn’t just spit out numbers. The platform’s analytical tools are designed to actually answer questions and provide solutions to common problems. PacketZoom CEO Gian said that every time a PacketZoom customer sent in a question about changes in performance or spikes in request failures, they had to “slice and dice data … we spent a significant amount of time trying to answer our customers’ questions. We realized we needed a tool to do the analytics.”
Mobile IQ is the answer to these problems. The platform is visually appealing and highly intuitive, and gives developers control over the kinds of optimization they want to exploit. Rather than purely optimizing performance through the Expresslane protocol, Mobile IQ lets developers see how Expresslane is affecting their network and better prepare themselves for peak usage times, request failure spikes, and throughput lags. PacketZoom CTO Chetan Ahuja calls this combination “data liberation,” which gives developers a double-edged sword: a tool to optimize performance and another to monitor and troubleshoot performance.
Another Mobile IQ feature is called Category Benchmarking, which provides developers with a reference point for how their apps are performing compared to other leading apps in the same category. Developers can compare error rates, user session lengths, and a range of other data indices to their competition. PacketZoom CEO Gian said that “we want to show developers how long their users are staying in the app. PacketZoom users stayed longer, and you can see the amount of data consumed per user. Ultimately, fewer errors can lead to more data consumption and higher engagement.”
Just last week, we wrote about Limelight’s new EdgeQuery analytics suite that works for CDNs going through desktop application networks. But PacketZoom’s Mobile IQ platform is unique compared to other analytic toolkits. First, it is specially built for mobile apps and works with mobile platforms like Cordova, Unity, and React Native. From the outset, Mobile IQ was meant to most efficiently optimize mobile apps. Second, the platform detects and analyzes data in real-time, producing alerts for traffic spikes, request failures, or throughput fluctuations almost instantly. Developers can actually create alerts themselves, designating when changes in throughput, usage, or error counts will alert them and facilitate immediate troubleshooting. And finally, Mobile IQ is completely free and will remain so forever.
The platform is designed to complement PacketZoom’s Expresslane feature and seamlessly round out developer and user experiences. “After talking to hundreds of developers,” CEO Gian said, “we’ve decided to launch an affordable mobile-only solution. By affordable we mean free forever.”
PacketZoom’s Expresslane SDK and Mobile IQ platform require no changes to an app’s infrastructure and integrate into a network without changing a line of code. These end-to-end products can help developers more efficiently govern their applications in real-time, improve performance, and optimize monetization.