Todays corporate networked applications must perform efficiently and provide agreed-upon service levels in order to support productivity and profitability. When the performance of networked applicat

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                  CONTACT: Evan Moltz
May 2, 2000                     508-651-1155 x11
                              emoltz@techguide.com

APPLICATION FLOW MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES NETWORK
ADMINISTRATORS WITH A REAL-TIME VIEW OF APPLICATION PERFORMANCE
ON A NETWORK

Today's web-enabled business enterprises increasingly depend upon the reliable performance of a new generation of networked applications. These increase their ability to support collaboration and shared knowledge amid internal departments, and to link the corporation with suppliers and customers. They include e-commerce storefronts, enterprise resource planning systems, supply chain management systems, and numerous other Internet and intranet applications. Working together as part of an integrated business management solution, these applications automate each corporation's unique business processes and provide significant competitive advantages. In order for them to succeed, however, there needs to be a concrete strategy to assure effective application flow management. The network environment that the applications live in is complex, subject to subtle interactions and, unless the end-to-end application flow is understood and managed, applications can fail.

According to Jerry Ryan, Editor-in-Chief at the Applied Technologies Group's (ATG's) techguide.com service, "When viewed in this context, agreed-upon service levels for network and application performance take on a new significance. It is now more important than ever before that both the applications and the network on which they are running perform at optimal levels.

"When application performance suffers, however," said Ryan, "conflict often arises as to whether the problem originates in the network or the application. Until now, pinpointing the exact source of the problem in a complex network environment has been a difficult task for network administrators."

"Application Flow Management technology," said Ryan, "provides an answer to this problem. It consists of software tools and non-intrusive, application-aware instrumentation (probes) placed at strategic points within the network. It presents network managers with a web-based comprehensive view of actual real-time application traffic flows over a network. It does this by correlating information from two distinct points on the network to arrive at a new metric called Network Flight Time. Utilizing this information, Application Flow Management software is able to identify the actual performance impact of an application on the network, as well as the network's impact on the application.
The ability to monitor application performance in real-time allows network administrators to respond quickly to any problem areas, since they will know immediately and precisely where the problem lies. Another benefit of the technology is that it can be used to predict likely bottlenecks due to increased traffic. Pre-emptive action can then be taken. Network traffic can be rerouted, or additional bandwidth can be allocated before problems actually occur."

The issues and benefits associated with Application Flow Management technology are further discussed in the latest ATG Technology Guide entitled, "Application Flow Management for Business-Critical Networks," written and published by ATG's techguide.com service and available free on-line at http://www.techguide.com/news.

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Techguide.com writes, produces and publishes Technology Guides that discuss the use and implementation of emerging technologies in six primary areas: Communications & Networking, the Internet, Computer Telephony, Data Warehousing, Document Management, and Enterprise Computing. Each Technology Guide in the series provides objective information and practical guidance. Our team of technology editors write each Guide to assist IT and business professionals in making informed decisions about all aspects of technology applications development and strategic deployment.

Techguide.com is supported by a consortium of leading technology providers. NetScout has lent their support to produce this Guide, "Application Flow Management for Business-Critical Networks". Some of the other vendors in this consortium include IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, AT&T, EMC, MCI, Sprint, Ascend, and Cisco Systems.

To view and print this Technology Guide, as well as all the other Technology Guides free of charge, visit http://www.techguide.com/news.
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