Streaming Performance of World Golf Championships Fails to Hit Hole in One, Says Keynote

Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), monitored the live streaming performance – meaning streaming quality and availability – of the popular World Golf Championships held in Doral, Florida. The company monitored live streams of the event from 16 geographical locations worldwide on the final and deciding day of the tournament March 15th. All together, Keynote tested streaming performance at some time during the final day of the tournament from 23 geographic locations in total. The results: online streaming performance was far from a hole in one. In fact, the performance was rather dismal. While some lucky golf enthusiasts may have been able to view the entire tournament at high quality, many others were unable to even connect to the streams and likely switched back to watching the event on television.

The overall availability of live streams of the event, as measured by Keynote Streaming Perspective®, was at a very low 64 percent. It appears that among North American cities San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta experienced the best streaming performance, while viewers in Chicago, Washington, New York and LA might not have gotten very far in being successfully able to view the event as it was being streamed live. Streaming performance in London, Paris and Amsterdam was better than the four poor performing US cities. The good news is that people who did manage to actually connect to the World Golf Championships’ live streams had an excellent user experience, much like they would have experienced had they watched the event on live television. Media and analysts interested in more information on global performance contact Dan Berkowitz at (650) 403-3305 or dberkowitz@keynote.com.

Ken Vodicka, product manager at Keynote said, "Our reports from Streaming Perspective show that the majority of the problems occurred between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. ET, when we saw connection timeouts and buffering events peak for certain locations. Also, as the tournament was coming to its highlight, the critical 18^th hole, overall availability dropped to below 20 percent. This must have left streaming viewers feeling very frustrated. The event underscores once again that the infrastructure for allowing many people to view a live streamed event concurrently is still in great need of improvement. For companies providing live or on demand streams, the only way to manage and improve the experience is to measure and monitor externally 24/7 from the end user perspective.”

Keynote measured live streaming quality of the final day of The World Golf Championships on March 15 from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. ET from 16 locations worldwide using its Streaming Perspective service.

Keynote Streaming Perspective measures the quality and reliability of streaming media the way your users experience it. From connect time to re-buffer events, the product provides a true picture of audio and video stream delivery, gives insight for infrastructure planning and provides the most effective early warning system to help resolve performance and availability issues in real time.

Keynote tentatively plans to monitor the Master’s Tournament coming up April 6^th to April 12^th.

About Keynote

Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN”) is the global leader in on-demand test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience. For over a decade, Keynote has been providing measurement data and testing capabilities that allow companies to understand and improve their customers’ online and mobile experience. Keynote has four test and measurement businesses: Web performance, mobile quality, streaming & VoIP, and customer experience/UX.

Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority™, Keynote has a market-leading infrastructure of 2,600 measurement computers and mobile devices in over 240 locations around the world. Keynote’s 2,800 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies including American Express, Dell, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone and YouTube.

Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.

Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority, Perspective and WebEffective are registered trademarks and The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority and True Experience are trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2009 Keynote Systems, Inc.