Concord pack diagnoses application health

Enterprise network professionals can get a better handle on the performance of their applications and network services with new software from Concord Communications.

Called Network Health-Response, the software is designed to provide customers with the data they need to optimize net performance and achieve agreed-upon levels of service while saving money on monthly network bills, company officials say.

"We've expanded Network Health from just looking at the network infrastructure - the routers, switches, remote access boxes and servers - to look up through the application layers," says Kevin Conklin, vice president of marketing at Concord. "We can now measure how well the end-user applications are being delivered over the network."

Network Health-Response, which will be announced this week, measures the performance of applications from SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle, as well as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. The software also measures the response times and availability of such network services as HTTP, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, Domain Name System and FTP. In conjunction with the network infrastructure measurements provided by the Network Health package, the new capabilities let administrators pinpoint network slowdowns and plan upgrades to resolve them.

Bundled in Network Health-Response is PulseCheck Agent, client software from FirstSense Software. The agent measures end-user application performance and reports that information back to the Network Health-Response server, which runs on a dedicated Unix or Windows NT box. Administrators access server or agent data via a Web browser that can be customized to provide views for network designers and operators, and business managers, among others.

Network Health-Response also supports network-response measurement tools from third parties, including Cisco, Ganymede Software, Response Networks and NetScout Systems.

The addition of application monitoring to Network Health's already comprehensive network performance statistics is a plus for Concord's customer base, says Kathrin Winkler of Renaissance Worldwide in Newton, Mass.

"Managing the interior of the network is important, but it doesn't measure the impact on the end user. On the flip side, measuring only the impact on the end user doesn't help you do anything to address a problem," Winkler says.

Booz Allen & Hamilton, a consulting firm based in McLean, Va., used the beta version of Network Health-Response to measure the performance of its virtual private network. The company's network spans 30 sites, supports 10,000 users and features 75 network devices. The company used the software to measure the end-to-end response time between the corporate network and the remote sites.

"It was an eye-opening experience," says Trent Gibson, system administrator with Booz Allen. "We saw a lot of high spikes in the response times, whether from congestion on the Internet or our ISP. Network Health enabled us to get a baseline for the kind of performance we can expect from the different sites."

Jerald Murphy, program director for global network strategies at the Meta Group consultancy, says new products such as Network Health-Response are "the first step toward integrating end-to-end service-level management for business. These products take all the technogeek information and report it in a way that a business person can understand. They demystify the information."

Network Health-Response is an add-on module that runs in conjunction with Concord's Network Health software. The new module ships this month and costs $15,000. The Network Health console costs $10,000.

Concord: www.concord.com