Interactive scorecard and NetResults: Application performance tools

Network World Fusion, 07/24/00

Every network is unique. This calculator lets you change the weights given to scores from our review to see which product might be best suited for your needs. Here's how it works: In each category, our reviewers rated the apps on a 1-10 basis. These ratings are then multiplied by the percentage weighting, and then added up to give an overall product score. Any score above 9 is considered "world class."

For each category below, assign the percentage weight you think is most appropriate. The percent-o-meter box on the right will keep track of your weightings to let you know when you've reached 100%. When you fill in the last box, hit your enter key, and you'll see how the apps rate (along with our final scores for comparison).

Percent-
o-meter

Category	Our weight	Your weight
Accuracy	25%	%
Reports	25%	%
Ease of use	20%	%
Manageability	20%	%
Installation	5%	%
Documentation	5%	%

Results table

Below, you'll find the 1-10 score given to each app by our reviewers. To obtain the final score: Multiply each individual score by the weighting given that category, then add up all those resulting numbers.

Vital-
Suite S3 Ver. 2.51 Pegasus 2.2 Eco-
Scope/
& Eco-
Tools App-
Scout Response-
Center 2.5

Accuracy 9 9 6 9 4 4

Reports 9 9 7 4 5 4

Ease of use 9 4 7 8 8 8

Manage-
ablity 7 7 9 7 7 6

Install-
ation 6 6 6 6 6 6

Document-
ation 8 6 8 6 8 7

Our total 8.40 7.30 7.15 6.85 5.95 5.45

YOUR TOTAL

NetResults

TOOL COMPANY RATING COST PROS CONS

Vital-
Suite Lucent (888) 767-2988 8.40 $44,000 for unlimited servers, 100 desktops and 50 network devices. Accur-
ately pin-
pointed bottle-
necks; full-
featured network moni-
toring tool; intuitive user interface. Pricey.

S3 Version 2.51 NextPoint Networks(978) 392-2026 7.30 Starts at $15,000. Accur-
ately pin-
pointed bottle-
necks; good trend detection. Interface was difficult to use.

Pega-
sus 2.2 Ganymede Software(888) 426-9633 7.15 Starts at $25,000. Good platform support; both passive and active modes; easy-to-use script language. Didn't always identify bottle-
necks; coarse granu-
larity for setting service levels.

TOOL COMPANY RATING COST PROS CONS

Eco-
Scope 4.1 and Eco-
Tools 7.1 Compuware (800) 521-9353 6.85 EcoScope starts at $19,500; EcoTools costs $695 per managed server. Pervasive support for a range of network-aware appli-
cations. Needed to export data into a rela-
tional data-
base for serious analysis.

App-
Scout 2.0 NetScout Systems (800) 357-7666 5.95 Starts at $12,500. Useful categori-
zation of network traffic by protocol, location, server and client; simple, effect-
ive user inter-
face with excellent online help. Requires NetScout probes; can't help find custom appli-
cation bottle-
necks.

Res-
ponse-
Center 2.5 Response Networks (800) 677-7638 5.45 Starts at $19,950. Identifies and measures certain TCP/IP and ODBC traffic well; easy-to-use interface. Can't find custom appli-
cation bottle-
necks.