Micromuse next month will debut software it says can help companies improve their application performance by identifying all the components of a business process and managing them as a logical unit.
Micromuse will use NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta to introduce Netcool/SLA Manager (SLAM) which is an add-on to the company's flagship Netcool/Omnibus fault management package.
The company says SLAM filters performance data collected by Netcool and can spot events, such as a Web or application server slowdown, that could affect the performance of an employee- or customer-facing business service. SLAM helps users model business services, or create a topology of the network elements an application uses, to determine when performance degradations or device failures will affect end users.
"Micromuse is looking to address the higher needs of a company by managing a service across network and system elements," says Glenn O'Donnell, a program director with Meta Group. He says the product will compete with Managed Objects' Formula and Business Service Analyzer software, IBM Tivoli's Service Level Advisor and Smarts' InCharge Application Services Manager.
Managed Objects has been ahead in the market, but competitors are inching closer as makers of fault, performance and other management tools add process management technology to their packages.
SLAM is installed on an HP-UX, Solaris or Windows server adjacent to a dedicated Netcool/Omnibus server. SLAM receives data from Netcool/Omnibus and uses agents on a network to collect data. The software looks at the events and matches the data against predefined service models to determine performance abnormalities. Network managers view service status via the SLAM graphical user interface with a Web browser.
SLAM costs between $200,000 and $250,000 for an entry-level implementation. The software will be generally available in September.
In other management technology news, NetScout this week will introduce an appliance designed to give network managers more visibility into the performance of LANs using Cisco's Gigabit Etherchannel technology, which enables Gigabit Ethernet links to be bundled to support bandwidth-intensive applications. The nGenius Gigabit Ethernet Aggregation 9900 Probe passively monitors traffic to collect data on application bandwidth usage, then sends the data to NetScout's nGenius Performance Manager for analysis.
Without such a tool, says IDC Senior Analyst Paul Bugala, network managers would have to manually gather and correlate the packets and usage data from the disparate streams of traffic.
The product costs $83,000.
Also next week, BMC Software will unveil an agentless version of its Patrol systems management software. Patrol Express is designed for users looking to monitor the availability of networks at remote offices or branch locations without having to deploy a full-blown management system, the company says. Patrol Express monitors for availability and up/down status on network devices and servers.
The software is installed on a Windows, Unix or Linux server at the central location, from which network managers use BMC's service integration portal to define the elements to be managed. Remote service monitor software sits at each remote location and collects data from network devices, applications and Web servers. The remote software sends information back to the service portal.
Patrol Express costs $100 per monitored element. BMC also offers a subscription-based pricing model that lets customers pay for Patrol Express as they use it.
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