Ipswitch this week detailed how it has upgraded its network monitoring software with a new user interface, encryption features and more storage capacity.

The company hosted about 40 customers last week in Newton, Mass., to detail the latest enhancements to its WhatsUp Professional network monitoring software. Formerly WhatsUp Gold, the software now can scale to manage more devices because Ipswitch added a SQL back-end relational database to store monitoring data. In previous versions, data was stored in files.

"We've done a lot of work to increase the scalability and the extensibility of the product," says Kelly Anderson, product marketing manager at Ipswitch.

WhatsUp Professional uses software installed on a dedicated server that polls managed devices using SNMP, ICMP or host file imports. This release enables customers to poll while monitoring; in the past, the two actions could not be performed simultaneously and IT managers could potentially lose monitoring data.

Other new features allow customers to choose to monitor their nets from an integrated Web server or with Microsoft IIS to access network status data from any Internet-enabled device. The company added 128-bit SSL encryption and user authentication options and added HTML reports that are accessible through a Web-based interface.

The new product is scheduled to be available in 30 days. WhatsUp Professional is available from Ipswitch for about $1,500, which includes a one-year service agreement. Current WhatsUp Gold customers with active service agreements will automatically receive WhatsUp Professional. WhatsUp Gold customers without active service agreements can upgrade for about $1,000 with a 60-day discounted rate of $695. Ipswitch will fully support WhatsUp Gold for 12 months.