This week we turn our spotlight on OPNET customers to gather their opinions of the ACE application performance management solutions they use. Since OPNET is an old timer with thousands of customers ranging from the FDA to GEICO, we anticipate a lively exchange.
OPNET’s ACE product suite includes two application management products—ACE Live and ACE Analyst. Acquired from Network Physics a year ago, ACE Live is an appliance that measures end-user response times for all transactions and users. It automatically discovers applications running on the network, and helps identify application performance problems in real time. In addition, OPNET touts ACE Live as a VoIP application performance management tool, and offers a NetFlow module that extends visibility beyond ACE Live appliance locations.
ACE Analyst is a well-established off-line application performance analysis tool that helps troubleshoot and predict application performance by enabling application performance data to be sliced, diced and examined in myriad ways. ACE Analyst accepts packet trace data from a variety of sources including third party network analyzers, utilities, and Web-based interactive packet captures, but the most seamless way is a one-click transfer of traces directly from ACE Live—even captures that were stored in the appliance days ago. ACE Analyst takes raw performance data and adds the “smarts” that would otherwise come from hours of data manipulation by an expert, thus speeding up troubleshooting. ACE Analyst also provides visibility into networks with application acceleration solutions that obscure performance information.
Founded in 1986, OPNET has about 600 employees and a worldwide presence. When asked to identify particular market segments to which OPNET’s ACE product suite is especially well suited, vice president of marketing Sue Cole told us that all sizes and stripes of enterprises can benefit equally. We expect that customers self select into the subset of businesses with pockets deep enough to afford a premium solution.
If you have deployed OPNET’s ACE Live or ACE Analyst, tell us what you think. Do they live up to your expectations? What were your impressions? A simple "I like it", "I have mixed feelings", or "I hate it" response is fine—but if you have insight to share with the community, then talk all you want. You can post a reply to this blog using your name or anonymously.
NetForecast is an internationally recognized engineering consulting company that benchmarks, analyzes, and improves the performance of networked data, voice, and video applications.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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ACE visualizes solutions were others search problems...
Hi, we are using ACE to solve all kind of problems in distributed, multi-tier environments.
Not only that analyzing transactions with ACE is much easier and faster compared to other tools, but the visualization capabilities are a great communication media to bring "networkers", application developers, server maintainers etc. to one round table to discuss the matter with pictures that everybody can understand.
Regards Frank
Application Performance
We are piloting Ace Live at the minute and are unsure yet as to whether it will do what we need it to do. We have an application on the network that has a history of intermittant performance issues. We need to know if it is something on the network that is causing the issues or if it is the application itself. The pilot has already proved that Ace Live can identify network issues quickly. I am not yet convinced of its ability to pinpoint application issues. If all it can tell me is, you have an application problem without actually steering me towards the source of the problem in the application then I would not be convinced to buy it. Any one have any experience or views in this area?
ACE-Live/ACE-Analysts
Working in a large regulated enterprise environment with a variety of Network Tools, we started using ACE Analyst a few years ago for profiling applications. The value that the product demonstrated resulted in quick expansion of the number of users due to it's superior troubleshooting capabilities. The ability to perform both a deep dive analysis, as well as generating high level reports (easily customizable) from the same tool has proved to be extremely valuable. ACE Analyst also is one of those rare applications that requires only a little bit of training and familiarity to get some value out of (with the use of Wizards and the aforementioned canned reports), but with some dedicated time and effort (and experience), you can unlock some of the amazing depth the program has.
We've only been using ACE-Live for less than a year, but it has proven far superior to the competetive product that it replaced that had been in our environment for 6+ years prior. We evaluated several different products, and ACE-Live stood out in not only it's technical capabilities, and ease of deployment (finding previously unknown problems within hours of going on the wire), but the flexibility and customizability of the tool as far as reporting and alerting (especially in the VoIP arena) is something that really is an enormous value add.
Any discussion of the value of ACE Analyst and ACE-Live is not complete without talking about the support that Opnet provides, which is truly what separates them from other vendors. In the years that we've been using their products, we've never had anything less than excellent support from their engineers, both in troubleshooting issues that arise during the usage of the tools, as well as in handling enhancement requests, and finding workarounds to our needs until the enhancements can make their way into the development cycle for the product. In addition, the training that Opnet provides for their products, both in person and online, is as good as any tech vendors we've used. The fact that this training is provided free for customers with active maintenance is a major plus in these tight budget times.
Regards,
A happy customer.
ACe Live
1)Ace Live actually gives you the capability of tracking lots of application metrics, like "number of turns" and "time to first byte". Insight into these metrics definitely point you in the right direction as far as application troubleshooting is concerned. For a more thorough analysis an interface with Ace Analyst is provided.
2)Ace Live supports the definition of individual HTTP-transactions based on the URL, making it easier to identify the performance bottleneck from an application perspective.
The strenght of Ace Live is that it is capable of reporting on high level SLA's whilst simultaneously offering advanced troubleshooting capabilities using a great user-interface.
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