Characterizing Organizational Use of Web-based Services: Methodology, Challenges, Observations, and Insights PHILLIPA GILL University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada MARTIN ARLITT HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA, USA NIKLAS CARLSSON Link¨oping University, Link¨oping, Sweden ANIRBAN MAHANTI NICTA, Eveleigh, NSW, Australia CAREY WILLIAMSON University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Today’s Web provides many different functionalities, including communication, entertainment, social networking, and information retrieval. In this paper, we analyze traces of HTTP activity from a large enterprise and from a large university to identify and characterize Web-based service usage. Our work provides an initial methodology for the analysis of Web-based services. While it is non-trivial to identify the classes, instances, and providers for each transaction, our results show that most of the traffic comes from a small subset of providers, which can be classified manually. Furthermore, we assess both qualitatively and quantitatively how the Web has evolved over the past decade, and discuss the implications of these changes. Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.2.0 [Computer-Communications Networks]: General General Terms: Measurement Additional Key Words and Phrases: Workload characterization, Web-based services, Organiza- tional use Authors’ address: P. Gill, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada,
[email protected]; M. Arlitt, HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA, USA,
[email protected]; N. Carlsson, Link¨oping Univer- sity, Link¨oping, Sweden,
[email protected]; A. Mahanti, NICTA, Eveleigh, NSW, Australia,
[email protected]; C. Williamson, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada,
[email protected] c ACM, (2010). This is the author’s version of the work.