Compuware Rolls Out Vantage 8.0

Compuware Corp. Tuesday at Networld+Interop announced the release of its Vantage 8.0 application performance management suite.

The Farmington Hills, Mich., company further integrated the suite of seven different tools and added a pair of new options to the suite to better predict and understand the performance of applications distributed across LAN and WAN links.

Compuware added a new WAN Provisioning Module that allows network operators to predict and profile how a new application will perform over the existing WAN infrastructure, before the application is rolled out. Using transaction profiles captured by the Vantage Application Expert in pre-production settings, it can show not only how the application will perform, but also how much capacity is available on the existing infrastructure.

Compuware also added the new ClientVantage monitoring software that can monitor both end-user response times and synthetic transactions. Based on Compuwares QARun testing tool, ClientVantage can monitor Web and Windows applications as well as those accessed from Windows clients, such as Citrix or host applications.

Vantage 8.0 also adds a new VantageView reporting module that can pull together performance data from each of the modules in the suite, and make reports available to end users over the Web.

The new end-to-end reporting via the web is one of the more promising enhancements, believes Vantage user Ronnie Sun, network engineer at J.P. Morgan Chase & Company in New York.

"With VantageView, we can tie all the other pieces together and do the correlation, so we will be able to present (performance) as a whole. Thats really helpful," he said.

Vantage 8.0 is also unique in the combination of monitoring and analysis the suite provides, believes industry analyst Debra Curtis at Gartner Inc. in Amherst, NH.

"Theyve put together a group of components that let you go from the application development part of the lifecycle where you can do planning and QA through this workflow process and do that kind of predictive analysis," she said. "Instead of throwing the application over the wall, developers can work collaboratively (with operations) to insure it will work as intended."

Vantage 8.0 is available now, and starts at $19,000.