Avesta Technologies snares a series of impressive wins

It will be easier then ever for federal network managers to buy software for monitoring the performance of Web-based applications, thanks to a deal struck recently between Avesta Technologies and reseller Government Technology Services, Inc. (GTSI).

The pact is the latest in a series of wins for Avesta, a New York maker of software that tracks and manages the quality of Internet services delivered to end users.

Avesta's two product lines - Trinity, which monitors the performance of IT and Internet services in real-time, and eWatcher, which tracks the response times of Web applications - are now available for government users from GTSI, a government contractor based in Chantilly, Va., that also offers Avesta's products on the General Services Administration's Multiple Award Schedule contract, a list of hundreds of prequalified hardware and software products available at discounts to federal buyers.

The federal win comes on the heels of other Avesta victories in government and industry. Four-year-old Avesta boasts such large enterprise customers as Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., Waterhouse Securities and the National Institutes of Health.

"The financial services market was the first to see the value of what we're offering," says Helen Toth, vice president of marketing at Avesta. "They're using our products to improve the availability and performance of the networks behind their critical business systems. They're leveraging our products not only to monitor their networks on a real-time basis, but also to determine what caused a problem."

Big with service providers

Toth says Avesta products also are attractive to network service providers, which use them to track their internal operations and figure out ways to improve their customer service. Avesta's carrier-class customers include ICG Equipment, ALLTEL Information Services, Bell Atlantic and US West.

But the company's newest push is in the government sector. "There's a sense of urgency in the public sector that network managers want to document the performance of their networks against their service-level agreements," Toth says. "They need to maintain higher levels of uptime."

Citing plans to go public later this year, Avesta officials declined to release the dollar value of the latest government win. However, Toth says the deals are "significant for us."

Charlie Jones, a network administrator with the National Institutes of Health, confirmed that the agency is using Avesta's Trinity software but declined to comment further. "As a government employee, I can't endorse any company or product," he says.

Industry observers say Avesta has managed to attract attention among end users and the investment community because of its unique technology and strong customer service.

"For such a small company, Avesta has managed to achieve decent name recognition," says Susan Aldrich, a senior consultant with Patricia Seybold Group in Boston. "They are the sole providers of this technology, which puts them on the A list for investments. . . . And customers find Avesta's products and the people who support them to be of good quality."

Avesta's products run on Windows NT and Solaris platforms, and will soon be available for the IBM S/390.

Avesta: www.avesta.com