Integrien this week will unveil capabilities in its flagship systems management software that it says will enable IT staffs to more quickly diagnose the cause of application performance problems and reduce post-mortem troubleshooting.

Alive 5.5, which starts at about $100,000, includes new features for better predicting application performance problems across distributed networks, the company says. The software compares "Problem Fingerprints," or known issues with popular applications such as SAP, against anomalous events in real time to more quickly diagnose slow response time or other application problems. In some cases, the known fix to the problem would also be stored in the fingerprints library, which would speed problem resolution as well as diagnosis, the company says.

"We have enhanced the product to spot predictive patterns and alert IT managers as a problem slowly starts to happen," says Kevin Strehlo, vice president of marketing.

He says Integrien also updated the software to provide more fine-tuned thresholds. Because it learns normal behavior, Strehlo explains, Alive 5.5 can detect abnormal behavior and reduce the number of false alerts IT managers receive. This version also features an AJAX-based display of "actionable" information within Alive's dashboard view.

Alive 5.5 runs on a centralized server, and using open APIs, collects monitoring data from Web and application servers as well as databases. The software discovers the path an application takes across the infrastructure to deliver IT services, and then determines a baseline of normal behavior to alert users when any components don't perform up to normal standards.

Integrien, which competes with the likes of BMC, Netuitive and HP with its Mercury Interactive acquisition, also updated the product with 72 SAP-specific metrics to speed problem detection and added support for applications based on Oracle Application Server and Oracle eBusiness Suite.