EdgeSight 3.1 Keeps an Eye on Desktops

The updated performance monitoring tool for end systems can send alerts if spyware or other types of programs are installed and can continue to monitor offline systems.

Do enterprises want to invest in monitoring the performance and availability of end-user systems? One small company believes that they do, and on Monday will launch a new release of its end-systems performance management tool to satisfy the requirements of a small but growing customer base.

"Anybody who has mission-critical desktops, such as a trader at a financial services firm, views the end user as important to their business," said Howie Markson, vice president of marketing at Westford, Mass.-based Reflectent Software Inc., a five-year-old company that also serves customers in the health care, manufacturing and retail sectors.

The latest release of Reflectents EdgeSight end-user systems management software, which provides continuous monitoring of the end system and establishes a benchmark of the normal operating environment, will send an alert if a new program is installed.

Alerts can now be grouped into different categories, including spyware, malware, Trojan Horses and dialer programs, and users can define their own categories to better assess their enterprise-wide spyware problem.

Reflectent also updated the spyware program category to include the latest spyware executables.

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EdgeSight 3.1 also improves the management of alerts by allowing them to be categorized and by suppressing secondary alerts kicked off by a single event.

"If you just want to set alerts for any new applications that appear in the environment, or if you want an alert panel to look at crashes, or if you want to look at any network latency alerts, you can also filter alerts to deal with them in a prioritized way," described Markson.

Read more here about EdgeSight 3.0, the previous release of Reflectents desktop performance management tool.

New alert-filtering capabilities allow specific pages for displaying alerts to be grouped by alert type, application, system source, network host or device.

The agent-based tool can monitor every application the end user runs, including packaged and home-grown applications. The agent communicates with a central server that collects data from all installed agents, aggregates and analyzes the data and provides an enterprise-wide view of end-system performance.

The agent also stores some data locally, so that it can capture whats happening on the desktop when it is not connected to the network. That allows a centralized administrator to pinpoint problems even when the end system is not online.

Agents are deployed using software distribution tools such as Microsofts Systems Management Server, LANDesk Software Inc.s LANDesk suite, or other software distribution and change management programs.

To read more about Microsofts SMS (Systems Management Server) 2003, click here.

EdgeSight can help eliminate the finger-pointing that goes on between different IT groups by pinpointing the source of problems to the desktop, server or network, according to Markson. "IT needs an end-user perspective on how well the entire IT infrastructure is performing. You cant do that by looking just at the network or the server," he said.

EdgeSight 3.1 is available now. It is priced at $50 per desktop, and $50,000 for the centralized management server.

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