Network Physics today became the latest monitoring provider to utter the link-the-network-to-the-business-service mantra when it launched a new monitoring appliance.
The NP/BizFlow-2000 appliance includes a Business-Network Integration Engine that can track TCP and UDP traffic flows to monitor for performance, response time and utilization and dynamically to link the flows to the relevant business groups.
“The BNI layer lets us uniquely group the information (it collects) into relevant groups, such as geographies, departments, data centers, customers, partners and so on,” described Bob Quillan, vice president of marketing for the Mountain View, Calif., company. “We can also see how information is flowing between the groups.” Users can then see the flow of applications such as Oracle and SAP software across different geographies “and see IP-to-IP conversations,” he added.
The NP/BizFlow-2000 appliance attaches to the mirror or spanning port on a network switch and passively monitors the traffic flowing across the network. It is typically installed at major network aggregation points. “It can see whos talking to whom, what the application is, where traffic is going and where its coming from, without having to install agents on any devices,” Quillan added.
The appliance competes with monitoring tools from NetQoS Inc. and NetScout Systems Inc.
The Business-Network Integration Engine can collect performance, utilization, route, Border Gateway Protocol and packet information once per minute. It analyzes the data in the context of IT-defined business group, group-to-group connections, application and business policy specifications.
At the same time, the appliance with the Business-Network Integration Engine can provide the detailed drilldown required to troubleshoot complex performance or availability problems.
The one-unit-high appliance is available now. Typical initial installations include two to three units and start at $100,000.