Integrien fine-tunes system monitor

Integrien last week announced an upgrade to its flagship systems monitoring software that can give customers better visibility into the performance of IT components supporting end-user applications.

The company, which was founded in 2000 and relaunched in May with $6.5 million in funding, enhanced its Alive software with a feature that automatically updates thresholds at which the software will alert IT staff to a potential performance problem. For example, instead of network managers having to reconfigure the software to alert on events, such as CPU utilization being over 60%, Alive 5.0 will update itself to alert on this metric.

Integrien also added capabilities that let the software reduce the number of alerts network managers receive. For example, Alive 5.0 will collect and analyze events, consolidate the relevant information and send one alert to IT staff that includes details on the root cause of the performance problem. Customers can click on the "actionable alert," the company says, and get more details as to what caused the issue.

The new version also discovers logical and physical network elements supporting applications, and the software provides tools to help network managers configure the elements. The data collected also is stored in a database, which can be tapped for comparative analysis to determine which, if any, changes to configurations caused performance degradations.

Alive 5.0 runs on a centralized server, and using open APIs collects monitoring data from Web and application servers, as well as databases. The software discovers the path an application takes across the infrastructure to deliver IT services, and then determines a baseline of normal behavior to alert users when any components don't perform up to normal standards.

Integrien executives say the software can provide customers with visibility into specific transactions causing performance problems. For Robert Simpson, Web hosting manager for Baxter BioScience in Deerfield, Ill., Integrien's Alive software, formerly SiteAlive, helps him quickly pinpoint which server in a load-balanced cluster is failing. Simpson started working with Integrien about three years ago on a consulting basis and recently upgraded the software he had in place with the new version.

"The biggest problem we had with monitoring software is that it stopped at the load balancer," Simpson says. "We run our apps on clusters behind the load balancers, so most monitoring tools told us the problem was there but they couldn't pinpoint it down to a specific server."

Simpson says the software helped his company better support some 19 Web sites worldwide by reducing the time it took to determine the source of problems.

"We started using it to get a picture of what was happening behind the load balancer, but now it's our bread and butter when it comes to monitoring," he says.

Integrien says its software, which combines monitoring and analytics, could compete with products from BMC, specifically those that BMC partners with Netuitive to provide predictive analytics technology. Integrien also considers Mercury Interactive products associated with its Appilog acquisition competition. Appilog developed application-mapping technology.