Visual Networks is poised to enter the applications-monitoring arena. The company this week plans to announce two monitoring applications: UpTime Select AppFlows and UpTime Select AppSummary. The software is designed to run on the company's existing Analysis Service Element, or ASE, devices.

Steve Hindman, Visual's executive vice president of product management and marketing, described several scenarios where the new capabilities could be useful.  For example, customers should be able to reduce internal finger-pointing when a server experiences poor response times, because the ASEs will display actual performance levels of various network and server functions, pinpointing the actual culprit. The software will also identify bandwidth hogs by user and by application and detect the network impact of new bandwidth-hungry applications, Hindman said.

In many ways, the announcement is as interesting for what it doesn't say as for what it does say.  At this point, Visual is still firmly in monitor-only mode. But Visual is becoming increasingly capable of drilling deeply into a traffic flow, identifying performance- and security-related issues, while still leaving it up to the user to actually take action based on this information.

Nevertheless, these new applications bring Visual closer to "active" management.  Naturally, Hindman declined to comment on what's not yet been announced. But we would be amazed if the Layer 7 monitoring information weren't shaped by a future Visual product or fed to another device for shaping.  The most likely third-party candidate to receive the information is a router.  (Reminder: Visual already has a close relationship with Cisco, and the Visual software is available on several Cisco models.)

Back to reality. The Select AppSummary Module, which displays high-level views of network application behavior on a per-application and aggregated basis, is expected to list for $500 per site. The Select AppFlows Module, which drills more deeply into the application flows, is expected to list for $1,500 per site.  Both modules purchased together list for $1,700. 

All new Visual UpTime ASE models developed since 2001 with T-1 to OC-3 connections can be upgraded to run the new applications. First commercial shipments are scheduled for next month.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.