Network managers are inundated with a deluge of information daily. Alerts from multiple systems and tools keep them searching for the information that matters most to complete the task at hand (Compare Application Performance Monitoring products).

This week network and application performance management vendor Apparent Networks is set to release an update to its flagship product that company officials say includes reporting and dashboard capabilities that present the data the software collects in more meaningful ways.

"AppCritical provides an unbroken view of the network. When network managers look at the system, they can see the entire path and all the hops a packet traverses," says Steve Mank, chief marking officer at Apparent. "Now we have added an events and exception dashboard and enterprise-scale reporting capabilities that will offer network managers more information on where performance breaks down."

AppCritical 3.5 provides a view of distributed networks, including the segments owned by service providers, to show network managers the root of performance problems, whether it be the network or the application.

Mank says this method replaces older SNMP and RMON approaches to network and application performance management by providing more meaningful and actionable data quickly. "We don't need any remote agents or appliances, it is all software-based and it looks at the world from Layer 3 down," he explains.

The software sends packets every few minutes across a network and analyzes returning data to determine network latency, application response times and jitter, for instance. It includes software installed on a dedicated server as well as distributed bits of software - what Apparent calls sequencers - installed on a few key servers in data centers.

AppCritical 3.5 is available now, and pricing starts at $75,000, depending on the network.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.