June 3, 2008 2:02 PM
Posted by: Ryan Shopp
NetQoSinto Performance Management. When it comes to the Performance management of IP traffic, NetQoS continues to remain laser focused on being the company enterprise’s call in to help! At the heart of Performance monitoring is latency and today’s announced acquisition of Helium Systems and introduction of the NetQoS Trade Monitor continues to build on that brand.
NetQoS started building it’s “Performance” brand many years ago original around it’s innovative SuperAgent appliance. That appliance set the drumbeat for the company that they still march to today. Gathering the right data, preferably traffic flows, and provide latency, error, throughput and other performance metrics. As Netflow from Cisco (and others) gained momentum they embraced that and added that traffic flow data to their bag of Performance Management tricks (known as ReporterAnalyzer).
They continued to embrace and extend this brand with very intelligent previous acquisitions of:
- Pine Mountain Group in December 2005, Performance Management training and consulting focused, including over 2500 certified NetAnalysts (including yours truly) from their comprehensive, vendor-neutral training.
- RedPoint Systems in April 2005, Performance Management polling and reporting solutions (think software that competes against everyone from Concord eHealth down to Solarwinds Orion over to ZenOSS).
While also making R&D investments in latency sensitive traffic types like VoIP (e.g., the introduction of their VoIP Monitor in August 2007) and now the introduction of Trade Monitor, for latency sensitive Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol transactions. FIX protocol is used by financial institutes performing electronic exchange of securities transactions.
Personally, I love this strategy of not watering down the core brand and listening closely to what Enterprise customers are asking for in the arena of Performance. It continues to work, when I talk to customers and competitors alike and I ask about who they see in the marketplace, NetQoS is on the top of both of their lists.
June 2, 2008 5:00 AM
Posted by: Ryan Shopp
CMDB,
DataCenter,
EMC,
HP Software,
SymantecI recently took a pass at mapping HP Software’s offerings to the Data Center Automation Blueprint after a call I had with a product executive from the Business Service Automation group (majority of the Opsware products went here). I also attempted to use the HP software website to piece together the Business Service Management side of things (where legacy OpenView and many Mercury products are). Recently, I had a chance to talk with a product executive from the Business Service Management side and learned while my mapping was close, it was slightly off. So now it’s time to take a pass at updating things.
The amazing thing I will say about the HP Software portfolio is it has pulled together a great set of formerly standalone vendors (e.g., Mercury, Opsware, Peregrine and legacy OpenView line) to offer comprehensive coverage for automating and managing your entire IT infrastructure. Their capabilities go well beyond the Data Center.
- Configuration & Change
- for networks – Network Automation Software (formerly Opsware, formerly Rendition)
- for servers, applications & databases – Server Automation Software (formerly Opsware)
- for storage – Storage Essentials Software (formerly AppIQ)
- Performance & Availability
- Products that are Availability (event) centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
- for networks – HP Network Node Manager software – agent-less approach
- for servers, applications & databases
- HP Operations Manager software – agent-based approach
- HP SiteScope software – agent-less
- (NOTE: agent-based requires a proprietary agent to be installed on a system, agent-less leverages either industry standard or de-facto standard protocols or embedded management agents)
- for applications – HP TransactionVision software – agent-based performance and availability software for services/applications/databases
- Products that are Performance & Capacity (periodic time-series collected data) centric for the Data Center Infrastructure
- for networks – HP Performance Insight software – agent-less approach
- for servers, applications & databases – HP Performance Manager software – agent-based approach
- for applications – HP Real-User Monitor software – monitors applications/services/data traffic flows
- for end-to-end services/applications/network/databases/etc – HP Problem Isolation software – uses advanced correlations and analytics in an attempt to identify the specific problem or condition.
- Resource Reconciliation
- Universal CMDB software (formerly Mercury, formerly AppLogic)
- Process Orchestration
- Operations Orchestration Software (formerly Opsware, formerly iConclude)
So that means for the other functional areas of the Data Center Automation Blueprint we have:
- Analytics
- HP Dashboard software & HP Business Service Level Management – offers a unified user interface consolidating reports and statistics spanning multiple other product lines within Performance & Availability to IT Service Desks.
- Security & Prevention
- HP WebInspect software – web application vulnerability scanning
- **NOTE: In my eyes, this is more a security extension to the QA and Testing products from Mercury then part of a security & prevention software portfolio like that of Symantec, McAfee or EMC RSA.
So there we have it (i think). Now please correct me if I’m wrong. As mentioned previously, s major hole is in the area of security & prevention. Second, would you go to HP for your storage management needs over EMC or Symantec (Veritas) when they only seem to have a single storage management product. I don’t see offerings focused exclusively on monitoring availability and performance, but I may have overlooked it.
Bottom line after all this. HP is the one to chase from having a comprehensive Data Center Automation strategy. The unique thing is this can be creatively coupled with various hardware and service offerings they have. In addition, with the pending EDS acquisition…they ARE the gorilla leading Data Center Automation sector toward the vision of someday being a “lights out data center.” We still have a long ways to go, but HP Software is well down that road compared to others.
May 30, 2008 10:20 PM
Posted by: Ryan Shopp
DataCenterWell, first off I wish to apologize for the lack of original content during this hectic month in my personal life (aka birth of first child). It’s obvious when I look back and see that I only crafted a single original piece this month. This also makes it kind of pointless to actually do a “month in review” since a majority of my posts were links to news & articles I was able to consume over the month in between the moments of chaos.
So instead of using this post to simply apologize and say I’ll do better next month, I thought I would take the time to list off some items I have on my to do list for the month ahead.
- HP Software, round 2 – had a talk back in late April with a product executive over the performance oriented products….time to update the original write-up
- Part 5 , the final installment of the Performance/Availability vs. Analytics discussion thread
- An update to the Data Center Automation Blueprint based on the that 5 part thread
- Further discussion and impressions from my backlog of vendor briefing notes I’ve accumulated that include (in alphabetical order); CITTIO, eG innovation, GridApp Systems, InfoVista, Managed Objects, Mazu Networks & Nimsoft
I also thought it would be a good opportunity to ask you the reader to throw out some topics to ponder, investigate and discuss in the month(s) ahead. This blog is now going on 8 months in age and it dawned upon me that I haven’t recently asked what you want to hear/talk about. So please leave a comment (either anonymous or otherwise) on things you would like to see more dialog around.
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