Operational Issues Confronting e-Business Today:
Business through the internet has expanded by leaps and bounds and continues to do so. With opening up of the world economies e-business has become truly global for buyers and sellers alike. Also keeping pace are the associated problems that are both technical and non-technical in nature. The prime concern for any e-business is secure and efficient handling of run away transaction volumes at acceptable response levels. Congested networks are causing delays, even outages. Slow downloading time is one of the main reasons potential on-line customers switch web sites. Long waiting times can prove disastrous. The web site load pattern varies from hour to hour. For example, lunch time and after hours load on an on-line super-store will be more than it is during working hours, as that is when people like to do their purchases. Unacceptable response times could result in on-line customers abandoning the cart midway and switching to competition. The varying internet networks?? bandwidths and load patterns mean response times could vary widely from place to place even for the same traffic volumes. The web sites would like to know in real time where the bottlenecks are on a regular basis. Constant monitoring is therefore a must to enable web sites identify problems and initiate remedial steps without loss of time or on-line customers. There are other problems as well. These relate to web site??s accessibility, availability, security, data integrity and dangers from the hackers. Invariably, even the best managed web sites do not know what the exact problem is and where! Until informed by a frustrated customer. Clearly, web site owners would prefer to concentrate on challenges posed by their business rather than spending time on these extraneous issues. For every web site in e-business, therefore, there is an urgent need for constant 24x7 monitoring that keeps constant vigil and reports response time delays and any availability or accessibility problem; also regularly monitoring consistency of content and protected areas for any violation.

The Dotcom-Monitor.com Solution:
The Dotcom-Monitor.com is a secure advanced 24x7 web site monitoring service that provides comprehensive web site monitoring and helps address the issues and concerns raised above. Dotcom-Monitor service keeps the web site performance informed about it's availability, accessibility, security and content and highlights any deviations from the supplied norms. The website monitoring management studies these exceptions and takes appropriate remedial steps. That means that the applications keep running within acceptable web server monitoring parameters and therefore are more profitable. Other available services in the Dotcom-Monitor portfolio include checking of password protected sites, online form work check, verification of web site??s Digital SSL Certificate validity, providing client-side help (called Cookie support); providing detailed performance metrics; performing web load stress test by simulating upto 1000 concurrent users; business transaction support; can suggests bottlenecks within applications; customer??s network monitoring and related services etc. Dotcom-Monitor can also help a new e-business prospect assess impact of varying levels of simulated load; tune up their infrastructure before the web site launch. This results in arriving at an optimum start-up solution and costly mistakes are avoided.

How Dotcom-Monitor Service Works:
It is important to know other components that makeup any website operational environment besides the site, the client and the browser that Dotcom-Monitor service interacts with. These include File Transfer Service
(FTP); The Domain Name Service (DNS) that provides IP address for the site name; Telnet (Port availability); Trace Root Servers, Ping (Routers/Firewall), POP3 (email) Server etc. Dotcom-Monitor has remote agents strategically positioned around the world each acting as an internet browser. After a customer creates an account with Dotcom he supplies URLs of his web sites to be monitored, the process starts immediately. Dotcom global agents start checking the web site(s) to ensure the web site is accessible, has proper content, and is maintaining acceptable levels of web server performance as per norms supplied. If any of these fall outside the specified parameters, the notification process starts. To take just two examples, web server performance monitoring checks the time it takes for the web server to respond to the monitor agent??s request against acceptable response time (say 5 seconds). If page takes more time to load on the agent??s browser web site is notified as a possible performance issue. For content check, customer provides a specific keyword or a phrase that
network monitoring uses to ensure that the page was not altered and has proper content. This check is crucial for data base driven web sites. In case keyword is not found on the page the monitor notifies and also stores snapshot of the page for customer??s review. Similarly, sites are checked for consistency of content and for accessibility (and availability) through its world wide agents and notifies if any problem is detected. Dotcom-Monitor, therefore, provides a much needed non-stop monitoring service for smoother running of e-businesses.

Conclusion:
It is clear that the increasing customer preference for doing business on-line, and the rapidly expanding global e-commerce not only mean greater opportunities for e-businesses worldwide; but also, that, unless a constant global monitoring service is integral to the overall business e-business strategy, the web sites can never realize their true worth. Dotcom-Monitor.com provides just the right solution to help web sites realize their full potential.