SOURCE: Apparent Networks

June 30, 2008 08:30 ET

Apparent Networks Debuts AppCritical™ Version 3.5 for Managing Network Performance in Converged Environments

Features New Synthetic Traffic Analysis That Simulates Performance of Converged Network Applications Such as VoIP; Major Scalability Improvements; and Enhanced Reporting and Dashboards for Technical, Business and Executive Stakeholders

WELLESLEY HILLS, MA--(Marketwire - June 30, 2008) - Apparent Networks, Inc. today announced the availability of Version 3.5 of its flagship AppCritical solution. The new release includes features that help enterprises to better manage network performance and application delivery in their large, converged environments. It also includes a new suite of enterprise-ready reporting and dashboard capabilities that present AppCritical's data in ways that are meaningful, relevant and actionable for not only the network team, but also business line managers and executive staff.

Synthetic Traffic Analysis enables users to create traffic flows that mirror the unique properties of specific applications. This traffic uses the same application and signaling protocols as the real applications, ensuring accurate modeling of how applications will be affected by network performance. In VoIP deployments for example, customers can accurately project the impact of adding any number of new VoIP phones to their network. AppCritical can easily identify and diagnose issues before they disrupt actual deployments.

The monitoring capacity of AppCritical's analysis engine, the Network Intelligence System (NIS), has been increased by 50 percent. This higher capacity enables large enterprises and managed service providers to deploy AppCritical more broadly and efficiently.

New interactive, Web-based dashboards make AppCritical's information immediately available to more users in a relevant and useful format. They provide customizable trend reporting on business-critical metrics, such as infrastructure performance, events and exceptions and service quality compliance. The dashboards also enable users to drill down to detailed analysis of the performance of an individual network path or group of paths. AppCritical's expanded reporting capability includes new reports such as a VoIP Assessment, which enables customers to gauge their network's readiness for planned VoIP deployments.

"As a long-standing user of AppCritical, we are excited to see the integration of synthetic traffic analysis into the product," stated Martin Webb, Team Lead of the Proactive Monitoring Group for the Province of British Columbia. "We have been using AppCritical to ensure network performance is meeting expected service levels for some time now. This has proven to be invaluable. With the added ability to accurately determine application performance by generating real traffic, we will be provided with an even greater insight into the capabilities and overall network health of our services. AppCritical just keeps getting better. With the newly announced functionality, including improved reporting and greater integration with services such as Active Directory authentication, the value of AppCritical keeps increasing."

According to Will Cappelli, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc., "Given the increasingly complex dynamics between network infrastructures and applications, we're not surprised that so many of our clients have questions about how best to manage the delivery of networked applications. There is a growing visibility gap between network performance and application delivery, which we expect will increase customer demand in this area of technology."

Additional new features in AppCritical Version 3.5 include the following:

--  Active Directory Authentication -- Integrated support for Lightweight
    Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Microsoft Active Directory for
    centralized user management and authentication reduces overhead and risk
    exposure
--  Web Services API -- Facilitates a standards-based (SOAP 1.1) method
    for integrating AppCritical into existing enterprise infrastructures and
    workflows
--  Embedded auditing -- For assessing compliance with corporate
    governance standards such as ITIL
    

AppCritical Overview

AppCritical is an enterprise-class, network performance management solution that gives customers unique, real-time views of the functional state of their networks. It is designed to handle the complex dynamics that exist between applications and network resources in today's converged environments. AppCritical enables faster and less expensive network problem resolution and provides an effective way to continuously monitor network performance and its impact on application delivery and end users' quality of experience.

Unlike traditional, device-centric monitoring tools, AppCritical takes a radically different approach. It looks at the network infrastructure from the perspective of the applications that run on it. AppCritical automatically learns and understands the key characteristics and behaviors of every device at each hop along a network path. With this holistic view, AppCritical gives customers a complete, unbroken view of their complex, distributed networks, even those segments owned by service providers. The result is end-to-end network visibility that is unmatched in the industry today.

About Apparent Networks

Apparent Networks develops and markets software that provides a unique approach to managing the performance of network-dependent applications. The Company's AppCritical solution measures and diagnoses live, converged networks with continuous real-time monitoring. It provides unbroken, end-to-end visibility into the critical performance characteristics of network resources needed for voice, video and data applications. AppCritical has been successfully deployed by large enterprises, managed service providers and tier-one technology vendors to assure end-user quality of experience. Customers include 3Com, Affiliated Computer Services, Boeing, Electronic Arts, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Network Appliance, Nortel, Siemens, Symantec, TELUS, and Toshiba. For more information, visit www.apparentnetworks.com.