Software bargains: Useful tools for under $1,000

SolarWinds, Itheon, Adrem and others offer software, IT tool sets at scaled-down prices to help customers address big problems with little cash

LAS VEGAS – IT executives wandering around the Interop Las Vegas show floor this week found some software bargains on everything from network analyzers to emulation software to firewalls.

Vendors in some cases have slashed prices on products, making it possible for many customers to acquire new capabilities without hefty price tags.

"Sometimes you aren't even looking to solve a problem, but you see something at Interop that addresses a need and isn't too expensive to consider," says Jubel Caudill, senior network and systems administrator at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., recalling how he came across Netcordia's NetMRI appliance at last year's Interop show. "You hear about a lot of products, but most are too expensive. At Interop, when you see something cheap, you stop and investigate."

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LAS VEGAS – IT executives wandering around the Interop Las Vegas show floor this week found some software bargains on everything from network analyzers to emulation software to firewalls.

Vendors in some cases have slashed prices on products, making it possible for many customers to acquire new capabilities without hefty price tags.

"Sometimes you aren't even looking to solve a problem, but you see something at Interop that addresses a need and isn't too expensive to consider," says Jubel Caudill, senior network and systems administrator at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., recalling how he came across Netcordia's NetMRI appliance at last year's Interop show. "You hear about a lot of products, but most are too expensive. At Interop, when you see something cheap, you stop and investigate."

Here are a few companies whose products they were stopping to see:

SolarWinds

SolarWinds first made news this week by acquiring Neon Software, but the company also upgraded its Engineer's Toolset to Version 9.0, which the vendor says is already in use at more than 30,000 IT shops today.

Engineer's Toolset 9.0, which is made up of 48 applications such as network discovery, Cisco configuration management and IP address management, helps network managers diagnose and troubleshoot network issues from a desktop or laptop. The suite of applications now includes a new tool that collects up to two hours of Cisco NetFlow traffic and can report on bandwidth consumption and characterize traffic in fine detail.

"Most NetFlow collectors are larger server-based applications that require you deploy a database. This is a single application with a point-and-click interface," says Kenny Van Sant, chief product strategist at SolarWinds. "This is the product that built SolarWinds. It is what people associate with us."

Also in this release, SolarWinds included its free TFTP server, which is in use in 650,000 instances worldwide. TFTP Server is a multithreaded server that can be used to upload and download executable images and configurations to routers, switches, hubs and more. SolarWinds' free tool will run on most Microsoft operating systems up to Windows XP and as a service on installed machines. Engineer's Toolset 9.0 also supports SNMP Version 3.

Available now, the upgrade is free to existing customers; for new buyers it costs about $995.

Itheon Networks

Much like network-emulation tools released this week from Apposite Technologies and Shunra, software from Itheon Networks lets customers test how well applications will fare under specific network conditions.

The British-based vendor, with U.S. offices in Reno, Nev., took the opportunity to introduce its technology to U.S. buyers and made it a bit more appealing by offering it for less than $1,000. Itheon Networks Emulator (INE) for Windows provides customers with "a network in a box," the vendor says, allowing them to create simulated conditions against which to test applications before deployment.

The software installs on a server, and application developers tap its features from desktops or laptops. Network engineers can also tap the server software to build specific scenarios on which application developers can base their work. The product promises to help application developers better understand network conditions and build applications to run smoothly -- rather than risking an application causing problems in a production network.