Compuware, Segue smooth out apps management

Compuware and Segue Software next week are bolstering their application management wares, with Compuware finding ways to boost performance without increasing a user’s equipment expenses and Segue managing application quality.

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Compuware on Monday is rolling out Vantage 9.1, the company’s application service management package that features Linux re-hosting, “WAN right-sizing,” and server consolidation in this release. The product ties infrastructure management to service management to improve alignment of IT resources with business requirements, the company said. Vantage 9.1 can help save money by finding opportunities to better application performance without costly upgrades, according to Compuware.

The Linux re-hosting feature is for customers migrating to Linux, Compuware said. Vantage will provide monitoring of performance from the client, network, and server perspectives, delivering reports containing essential baseline information for evaluating changes to application service levels after a migration, the company said.

Customers in moving to Linux may save money but there is a risk to performance, said Lloyd Bloom, Vantage product manager at Compuware. Compuware is providing best practices for moving to Linux, he said.

With WAN right-sizing, Vantage provides reports on bandwidth consumption by application and user. This information enables more informed decisions on bandwidth subscription levels.

“WAN right-sizing is the process of finding opportunities to reduce bandwidth by highlighting the applications that are not business-critical on a particular WAN link,” Bloom said.

The server consolidation function provides a detailed view of server traffic to highlight opportunities to reduce costs by eliminating underutilized servers and non-essential server access, Compuware said. 

An early user of the product said Vantage 9.1 enabled diagnosis of bandwidth problems. “The users were complaining [that a financial application] was slow,” said Scott Jester, senior network engineer at Sutter Health. “Using the tool, we were able to find out that it wasn’t actually the application that was slow. It was something that was running in concurrence,” a SQL Server application, he said. Thusly, Sutter Health plans to isolate the SQL Server traffic on a different network circuit, which will be much less expensive than upgrading the circuit originally thought to have been the source of the problem, Jester said.

Vantage 9.1 allows Sutter Health to do base-lining of applications for provisioning, Jester said. He added, though, that he would like to see improvements in the enterprise reporting functions of the product to make them more flexible.

Shipping next week, Compuware Vantage 9.1 is priced at $25,000 for basic monitoring of one element, such as server monitoring.

Segue Software on Wednesday is introducing SilkCentral Quality Optimization Platform. The company defines quality optimization as defining and maintaining application quality across the application life cycle, from requirements and functional testing to load testing and monitoring.

“What’s new about this platform is this integrates all of those activities [such as load testing and functional testing] into a single platform, into a single architecture,” said Andre Pino, chief marketing officer at Segue. The product also can integrate with third-party tools for functions such as monitoring, he said.

Shipping in May, the product fulfills a need for quality optimization at a time when business demands compress development cycles, Pino said. ”There’s less and less time for quality testing” under today’s business conditions, said Pino.

Since the product is Web-based, it can be managed from anywhere, according to Seque. SilkCentral modules include Test Manager, to establish requirements and perform functional testing; Issue Manager, for defect-tracking; and Performance Manager, for deployment monitoring. The company’s Silk Common Architecture provides integrated flow of information within the product and features a common data repository.