Destination Views
Overview
Provider Intelligence provides three distinct ways to view and compare provider performance based on your selected destinations. Each view serves a different analytical purpose and displays data differently.
Destination View Options
Summary View: Aggregates performance across selected destinations into scores.
Universal Application Summary: Provides a comprehensive view across all applications available in our dataset, regardless of selected destinations, aggregated into scores.
Single-destination view: Displays raw metric values for one specific application or cloud region.
Access these views using the destination view selector above your results table.
For a discussion of scores vs. raw values, see Understanding Scores.
Summary View
Purpose: Answers the question "Which provider best meets my specific needs here?"
Results always include at least one of your selected destinations, though not always all, since tests from the user location to the specific destinations might not always be available through every provider’s network. Therefore, results cannot always provide a perfect match but instead provide the closest match.
When It Appears
The results table generates and defaults to the summary view when you select one or more cloud regions, applications, or a combination thereof.
The summary view is not generated when no destinations are selected; only the universal application summary view is generated and is the view by default.
See Quick Guide to Destination Views, below.
Key Characteristic
Per-metric scores (0–100) rather than raw values such as milliseconds or kilobits per second, averaged across only your selected destinations with test data. See Understanding Scores for a more detailed explanation.
Universal Application Summary
Purpose: Provides an objective, comprehensive view of provider performance across all application destinations within our dataset with test coverage from your selected locations. It answers the question, "Which provider performs best across all applications with available coverage at my selected locations?"
When It Appears
The results table defaults to the universal application summary view when you select no destinations.
The universal application summary is generated (but is not the default view) when applications make up all or part of the destination selections; it is not generated when only cloud regions are selected.
See Quick Guide to Destination Views, below.
Why It Exists
Test coverage is not uniform across all providers for all applications. For example:
Provider 1 might have extensive test data for Webex, Teams, and Salesforce.
Provider 2 might have extensive data for Webex and Teams, but limited Salesforce data.
If Provider Intelligence only compared your specific app selections, it could inadvertently favor providers with better test coverage rather than better actual performance. The universal application summary solves this by:
Ensuring results are always available: If your selected destinations have limited test coverage, the universal application summary can fill in results gaps.
Providing fair comparison: By including all apps, the universal application summary avoids penalizing providers for coverage gaps, avoiding coverage bias.
Preventing coverage bias: Scoring providers based solely on your selected destinations could be misleading if those destinations represent only a small fraction of available data. The universal application summary offers a broader, more objective view.
When to Use It
Strategic Planning: When you want to understand overall provider quality, not just performance for a few select apps.
Coverage Gaps: When your selected apps have sparse data, the universal application summary provides additional context.
Vendor Minimization: When evaluating providers for multi-site deployments, the universal application summary helps you identify providers with the broadest app support.
How It Works
When you select applications (for example, Webex) as part of your destination selection, Provider Intelligence:
Identifies all applications with test data from providers in your selected location(s), such as Webex, Slack, or Office365.
Calculates performance scores for each provider across all tested applications.
Displays the average scores in the Universal Application Summary view.
Key Characteristics
Per-metric scores (0–100) rather than raw values, averaged across all tested apps from selected locations.
Single-Destination View
Purpose: Provides precise performance data for one specific application or cloud region. It answers the question, "Which provider is best from a single user location to a single destination?"
When It Appears
When one or more destinations is selected, the single-destination view is generated, but is never the default view.
The single-destination view is not available when no destinations are selected.
See Quick Guide to Destination Views, below.
Key Characteristic
Displays raw values, such as 12.5 ms for latency or 0.02 % for loss.
Changing Destination Views
Recommended Workflow:
Start with Summary View: Get the big picture—which provider balances performance and stability across all your needs?
Check Universal Application Summary: Validate that your preferred provider’s performance holds across broader application coverage.
Drill into single-destination views: Verify performance for your most critical individual services.
Quick Guide to Destination Views
Location only
Universal Application Summary
None
Location + 1 or more apps
Summary View
Universal Application Summary and each app
Location + 1 or more cloud regions
Summary View
Each cloud region
Location + app(s) + cloud region(s)
Summary View
Universal Application Summary and each app and each cloud region
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