BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 2, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OPNET Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:OPNT), a leading provider of solutions for IT Service Assurance, this week revealed its strategy for High Definition Application Performance Management (APM). The announcement was made at OPNETWORK 2010, OPNET's annual technology conference being held this week in Washington, D.C., with more than 1,800 registered attendees from around the world.
High Definition APM™ addresses key challenges in effective IT service management. A successful approach must be broad, since the typical enterprise application relies on dozens or even hundreds of separate hardware and software components, such as web servers, network devices, and data bases. Experts employ specialized management tools to support each domain. Domain specific knowledge is important, however this "silo based" approach is insufficient to effectively manage the end-to-end performance of IT services.
According to Alain Cohen, OPNET President and CTO, "Some vendors who claim to deliver 'end-to-end' APM merely present side-by-side views from multiple management tools. A true end-to-end approach requires integration of data and workflows across management domains. However, OPNET's concept of High Definition APM goes beyond 'end-to-end' by emphasizing deeper, higher-resolution data and advanced analytics to leverage that data to enable root cause analytics and problem prevention."
High Definition APM is characterized by very fine-grained metrics as well as detailed transaction tracing to obtain a more accurate picture of the behavior and performance of all components of the application infrastructure. Tools that lack such detailed visibility often miss evidence of serious performance issues.
Marc Cohen, OPNET Chairman and CEO, stated, "More than merely a vision for OPNET's future, High Definition APM is delivered in our products today, with a greater degree of integration and forensic analysis than any other solution suite in the industry. Today we are announcing new products that will further fulfill our vision, and significantly advance the state of IT service assurance. Additionally, we are redefining our solution suite to more clearly convey its breadth and depth, including introducing a cohesive product naming scheme that more clearly reflects the roles of all of our domain solutions and the tight integration among them."
OPNET announced OPNET Service Xpert™ at OPNETWORK, a key new solution for cross-domain management. Service Xpert enables a service model-driven approach to performance management, with real-time business oriented views of the IT environment that immediately communicate the impact of problems on application performance. From these high level views, the user can drill into analytics that will isolate the problem to a specific domain, and from there invoke deep forensic analysis to diagnose the exact root cause. OPNET Service Xpert leverages established application and infrastructure discovery capabilities from across OPNET's application performance management and network performance management solutions to construct the integrated service model.
According to Alain Cohen, OPNET President and CTO, "The need for integration between application and network performance management is becoming more acute as the application infrastructure becomes more distributed and dynamic through virtualization, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and inter-application dependencies. OPNET Service Xpert will be a unifying solution providing dashboards and correlation across not only our APM suite, but also our network performance management suite. We are continuing to invest in synergistic workflows among our solutions in order to expand the range of problems that can be addressed, as well as increase the level of automation in IT service management."
AppDNA Xpert™ was also introduced at OPNETWORK. AppDNA Xpert discovers application components and maps them to a detailed infrastructure model to automatically populate the end-to-end service model in OPNET Service Xpert.
OPNET announced the following additional offerings as part of its High Definition APM suite:
AppTelemetry Xpert™ uses remote instrumentation techniques to provide visibility into the performance of the underlying application infrastructure, including server and network devices. This solution is particularly useful where direct instrumentation is not an option. Historical and real-time data from infrastructure components is seamlessly incorporated into analyses across OPNET's APM suite to provide a more complete picture. AppTelemetry Xpert also discovers the application path and the elements traversed by the transaction, retrieving targeted metrics to automate common troubleshooting work flows while substantially improving their accuracy. AppTelemetry Xpert leverages and extends capabilities drawn from OPNET's network management solutions to target infrastructure performance metrics that are particularly valuable for detecting and diagnosing application performance issues.
AppSQL Xpert™ provides deep visibility into database activity and also measures the performance of database transactions. The solution injects detailed database performance metrics and tracing into the root cause analysis process.
AppInternals Xpert looks deep into the complex software frameworks of modern servers, leveraging vast amounts of performance and forensic data to support all aspects of service assurance from the server perspective. It performs High Definition monitoring and forensic analysis for any type of application, and excels in particular in Java and Microsoft .NET environments. AppInternals Xpert uses unique technology to provide deep instrumentation with very low overhead.
AppResponse Xpert uniquely combines end-user experience monitoring and in-depth analysis of the behavior and performance of the underlying network. It leverages the network's central role as a conduit for data and transactions to obtain complete visibility of IT services across the enterprise. Real-time on-board analytics determine which components in the application infrastructure are contributing most to delays. AppResponse Xpert also incorporates Web Transaction Analytics, monitoring the transactions of all web users in real time and automatically identifying problematic web pages that are impacting user experience. Unlike most network monitoring appliances, which focus on either lower level network behavior or higher level business transactions, AppResponse Xpert combines both in a single appliance.
AppTransaction Xpert is the most powerful tool available for detailed analysis of application transactions captured from the live environment. AppTransaction Xpert is able to shed light on transaction behavior and performance. The software makes extensive use of patented visualization and analytics to dramatically improve pre-deployment testing and prediction, and accelerate troubleshooting in production. The combination of AppResponse Xpert and AppTransaction Xpert is unique in the industry, providing a seamless workflow that spans monitoring, alerting, triage, root cause diagnosis, and selected recommendations for remediation.
Availability
Service Xpert and AppDNA Xpert are planned to be available from OPNET in the second calendar quarter of 2011. AppTelemetry Xpert, AppSQL Xpert, AppInternals Xpert, AppResponse Xpert, and AppTransaction Xpert are available now from OPNET.
About OPNET Technologies, Inc.
Founded in 1986, OPNET Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:OPNT) is a leading provider of solutions for IT Service Assurance. For more information about OPNET and its products, please visit www.opnet.com.
OPNET, OPNET Technologies, Inc., High Definition APM, Service Xpert, AppDNA Xpert, AppTelemetry Xpert, AppSQL Xpert, AppTransaction Xpert, AppResponse Xpert, and AppInternals Xpert are trademarks of OPNET Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Statements in this press release that are not purely historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. OPNET Technologies, Inc. ("OPNET") assumes no obligation to update statements. Forward-looking statements are predictions based upon information available to OPNET as of the date of this press release and involve risks and uncertainties; therefore, actual events or results may differ materially. For a discussion of risk factors, see OPNET's reports, including its most recent 10-Q and 10-K, filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Note to editors: The word OPNET is spelled with all upper-case letters.