Mervyns department stores offer shoppers access to myriad brands at more than 170 locations, and according to IT managers, the company depended on just as many tools to manage about 200 systems scattered across 10 states.

Simon Puttick, director of store systems at the $3 billion retailer, headquartered in Hayward, Calif., says following an investment in IT systems and infrastructure that totaled close to $190 million, his team needed to put better monitoring tools in place to keep an eye on 31 major new systems along with the existing distributed network.

"We had a ton of tools to monitor all of this, but we needed something that was more strategic," he says. For instance, Puttick says a DS-3 line could go down in Southern California and "take down 10 stores," without headquarters being aware or the stores realizing they weren't alone in the failure.

"We needed to put tools in place that would show our store associates that we were aware of their network issue and were working on it," he says.

Yet as with any major purchase, the folks at Mervyns kept price on their mind when shopping for an enterprise-scale network and systems-management product. Puttick also had point-of-sale (POS) systems at 173 Mervyns stores in mind when surveying the management challenge ahead of him. Finding a tool that could manage as many as 4,000 nodes at a reasonable price posed a challenge, he admits.

"One key driver is the POS terminals. It is critical to be proactive in the retail store world," he says. "POS terminals could be considered thin clients or desktops, and in that scenario price would be prohibitive."

Because of price, Puttick looked past the management-software heavyweights and evaluated software from newcomers including Cittio. The management software start-up developed its WatchTower software to simplify network management, Cittio executives say. Puttick says the software made managing 400 servers in the corporate data center, 20 in each distribution center and two at every store location feasible. While the vendor didn't seem to have expertise in monitoring retail systems, Puttick says, the technology proved the company could handle the diverse network.

"Cittio made it clear they were moving into the retail market, and WatchTower was able to discover our entire environment, even the POS systems," he says.