NetQoS Buffs Up Network Performance-Management Suite

The updated NetQoS Performance Center suite allows greater integration with third-party applications, more fine-grained data collection and increased user accessibility.

NetQoS, the small but profitable network performance management vendor, on Jan. 30 updated its highly scalable NetQoS Performance Center suite to allow for greater integration with third-party applications, more fine-grained data collection and accessibility for more types of users.

The privately held company, which has been increasing revenues by 100 percent year over year, has a suite of three offerings that measure round-trip response time for a range of applications traversing large, complex networks.

NetQoS Performance Center 3.0, made up of NetQoS SuperAgent for end-to-end performance monitoring, NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer for Cisco NetFlow and IPFIX traffic reporting and analysis, and the NetQoS NetVoyant infrastructure performance-monitoring module, can now integrate data from third-party tools and custom data sources with the data it collects.

NetQoS also added the ability to export data collected by its suite to custom portals unique to the customers IT shop, according to Ben Erwin, product manager for the NetQoS Performance Center suite, in Austin, Texas.

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"We simplified integration to take data from third parties and custom data sources and marry that with data we provide in our suite," he said. "We also recognize the fact that a lot of IT shops have their own IT portal pulling data from different sources, so we can extend Performance Center into those frameworks as well."

NetQoS, founded in 1999, aims its tools at large enterprises with complex, worldwide networks. Electronic Data Systems, for example, uses the NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer to monitor 7,000 WAN interfaces in 16 countries, and a large automotive manufacturer uses NetQoS SuperAgent to monitor 280 business applications, according to Erwin.

Click here to read about NetQoS entry into the SLA (service-level agreement) management realm.

The latest version of NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer can report on performance metrics gathered at 1-minute intervals for up to 30 days. The previous version stored that data for only an hour. It also adds traffic analysis baselines and QOS (quality of service) reporting to allow users to configure traffic policies on the network.

"A lot of customers looking at [VOIP (voice over IP)] or [MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)] rollouts want a better handle on QOS. Weve added reporting into it to let engineers get a better understanding of how QOS classes are being deployed and how applications are being classified within each QOS policy," Erwin said.

NetQoS SuperAgent measures end-to-end response time and identifies how much latency in that measurement is in the network, in the server, in the application infrastructure and in the application itself, Erwin said. "We baseline normal performance by hour of day, day of week, week of month, and so on," he said.

The new release of NetQoS SuperAgent includes user interface enhancements and provides role-based permissions to allow different IT groups to exploit the tool. The intent is to solve performance problems faster by allowing different groups, such as the network operations or server management teams, to share information more easily.

The new version is available now. The SuperAgent starts at $40,000 while the ReporterAnalyzer and NetVoyant modules each start at $25,000.

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