September 13, 1999

Vendors ready tools to optimize application performance on networks

By Brian Riggs

Companies that depend on enterprise applications to simplify business processes and enhance the bottom line need to make sure those apps can run efficiently on their networks. Until recently, however, products designed to help IT mangers evaluate the ability of networks to handle apps have been too complex and costly for most companies.

That's changing. Network-management companies are starting to deliver a new generation of capacity-planning and simulation tools designed to ensure that enterprise resource planning, customer-relationship management, and other E-business applications perform optimally on networks.

At this week's NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta, Network Associates Inc. will demonstrate enhancements to its Sniffer Total Network Visibility line of monitoring tools that include embedded capacity-planning software from CACI Products Co., a developer of performance-prediction software. Sniffer Predictor will let IT managers gather network performance data for use in planning the deployment of new applications. The company will also demonstrate an enhanced Sniffer TNV that can monitor and analyze ERP traffic generated by SAP R/3 applications.

CACI will demonstrate Application Profiler 2.0, a revamped tool that simulates the performance of ERP, CRM, E-commerce, and other applications on company networks. The software gathers data on how Baan, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and internally developed applications perform in a test bed or when partially deployed on an enterprise network. Application Profiler then lets IT managers generate what-if scenarios to simulate how the application would perform if changes were made in areas such as switch speeds, WAN bandwidth, and server processors.

Optimal Networks Corp. last month released Application Vantage, a tool that can proactively identify trouble spots on networks running E-business apps and suggest ways to smooth out application traffic across the network.

Providers of IT services also recognize the need for network-simulation tools when it's time to deploy new applications. "If you're planning to unroll an ERP application, you need to know whether your network infrastructure can sustain the number of transactions and the amount of data that will be sent over it," says Rafael Osso, general manager of Comdisco Inc.'s network services division, which this week will add capacity planning based on software from Optimal Networks and NetSuite Development Corp. to its suite of managed network services.

Until now, capacity-planning and network-simulation tools have been too costly for many IT departments. "It's hard to justify spending $20,000 on a capacity-planning system," says Abel Ramierez, senior network administrator at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. When the hospital redesigned its network, it hired a consultant who charged $125 an hour and brought his own tools.

But prices are coming down. CACI's Application Profiler begins at $9,500, well below the company's ComNet Predictor, which starts at $24,500. Network Associates will let current customers upgrade to Sniffer Predictor for $8,995. It will also sell the product in a bundle with other analysis software for $11,995.

The primary driver for increased interest in capacity-planning tools stems from E-business apps' importance in business today. A poorly performing application can hurt the bottom line, says Bill Nachtigal, executive VP of business planning and development at Total Network Solutions Inc., a systems integrator that provides performance-monitoring and capacity-planning services.

When Total Network Solutions was founded six years ago, most of the interest in capacity-planning systems came from financial institutions. That has changed. "With the rise of E-commerce, it's more than just financial companies that rely on applications to run their business," Nachtigal says. "That whole need is now flowing out to other industries."