What do you think of Compuware’s Vantage?

In this week’s application performance management series we solicit feedback from Compuware customers about their experiences with the Vantage product lineup. Through aggressive acquisition, Compuware has assembled the requisite components to position itself against the “big four” management vendors—IBM, CA, BMC, and HP. Of the many management components Compuware offers, its ClientVantage, ApplicationVantage, and Vantage Analyzer provide application performance management.

ClientVantage is a user experience monitoring tool that either simulates the user experience using synthetic transactions or monitors the actual user experience with passive probes at the data center. It uses dedicated workstations to simulate user transactions, measure the resulting response times, and compare results against thresholds. The passive probe technology, acquired from Adlex in 2005, measures the application response times experienced by every user of every application anywhere in the network. Compuware tells us that its passive probe technology is the biggest draw for ClientVantage sales.

ApplicationVantage is an off-line analysis tool that allows you not only to troubleshoot application performance problems, but also to model the effects of corrective actions to see if a proposed solution will do the trick. ApplicationVantage is used in production as well as pre-production environments to compare a “problem” trace with a trace that is known to be good, and suggests possible causes and solutions to problems.

Vantage Analyzer is Compuware’s J2EE and .NET performance monitoring and analysis tool, which helps troubleshoot and anticipate J2EE and .NET performance problems.

Compuware is no Johnny-come-lately. In business since 1973, it now has about 7000 employees and annual revenues of approximately $1.25B. Compuware has big aspirations for competing against the “big four”, and predicts that it will raise the count to the “big five” as it succeeds in making inroads against the bigger management platform vendors.

If you have deployed Compuware’s Vantage products, 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. 

• APM
• Application Performance Management
• ApplicationVantage
• BNC
• CA
• ClientVantage
• Compuware
• HP
• IBM
• Vantage Analyser