Mercury Interactive Automates Application Performance Diagnostics to Speed Problem Resolution

Mercury Interactive Corp. (Nasdaq: MERQ) today announced the availability of Topaz with Auto RCA, a new diagnostics module that helps IT organizations easily and quickly identify the most probable causes of online services performance problems that impact the end-user experience, greatly reducing the time needed for problem resolution. Unlike other root cause analysis technologies, Topaz with Auto RCA takes a broad-based approach and covers the entire application infrastructure, including network, servers, and client performance metrics, whereas other root cause tools tend to focus on specific silos, trying to automate the entire process down to a single root cause. By learning the target environment and the normal behavior of applications and infrastructure elements, Topaz with Auto RCA quickly identifies when the system is going outside of the normal operating state and identifies the most likely problem source.

Singapore, March 8 2002 -Mercury Interactive Corp. (Nasdaq: MERQ) today announced the availability of Topaz with Auto RCA, a new diagnostics module that helps IT organizations easily and quickly identify the most probable causes of online services performance problems that impact the end-user experience, greatly reducing the time needed for problem resolution.

Today's economic climate dictates that companies have the absolute best quality assurance processes for business-critical applications in order to stay competitive. In a recent survey conducted by Mercury, findings showed that 98% of all websites it tested failed designated performance standards. Additional findings showed that 15% of these websites are underperforming at their design capacity level. This is often a reflection of many good companies which have ineffective Web systems. As a result, companies spend excessive investment on hardware in order to increase their Web performance and much time resolving application performance problems, all the while overlooking the core importance of having a good application performance management (APM) system and resolving issues at the root cause level.

Topaz Auto RCA combines rules-based intelligence with advanced statistical analysis to enable first tier response personnel to quickly correlate and prioritize performance metrics of end-user experience, network connections, and back-end systems, and then complete the hand-off to the silo expert for detailed drill-down. Application and operations managers responsible for performance management can apply Auto RCA in all phases of the diagnostic process starting with triage, escalation to the appropriate silo expert, and finally pinpointing the root cause of the problem.

   Unlike other root cause analysis technologies, Topaz with Auto RCA takes a broad-based approach and covers the entire application infrastructure, including network, servers, and client performance metrics, whereas other root cause tools tend to focus on specific silos, trying to automate the entire process down to a single root cause. By learning the target environment and the normal behavior of applications and infrastructure elements, Topaz with Auto RCA quickly identifies when the system is going outside of the normal operating state and identifies the most likely problem source. Auto RCA is not designed to replace human expertise -- rather enhance it by identifying the areas where human experts should focus their time.

Adding intelligence and automating processes that have been done manually to shorten downtime has obvious ROI benefits," said Diane Hagglund, director of product marketing at Mercury Interactive. Mercury Interactive is continually addressing and improving on areas of application performance and root cause analysis that speed time to resolution, and result in more productive employees and happier customers."
Being able to quickly identify and resolve functional and performance issues within the infrastructure is critical to our overall success," said Jeffrey Peter, director of quality assurance, Covisint. Weve been using Topaz to help us maintain our rigorous standards for application availability and performance and now with the new Auto RCA module we will be able to spend less time troubleshooting performance problems -- enabling us to maximize our resources for customer service."

Greater Efficiency, Clarity for IT Organizations

Topaz with Auto RCA reduces the time needed for infrastructure problem resolution by automating previously manual troubleshooting processes across the IT organization. Starting with the initial problem alert, Auto RCA enables front line operations managers to respond to and escalate problems more efficiently by using built-in intelligence that captures some of the expertise of applications specialists for more accurate problem identification from the start. Topaz with Auto RCA uses statistical methods to correlate end-user problems with system data gathered by either Topaz, or any other system monitoring solution already deployed within the enterprise.

About Topaz
Mercury Interactive's Topaz was designed to meet organizations' application performance management (APM) needs. By using Topaz, organizations can monitor the performance of their applications, receive alerts when issues arise, identify problems and diagnose their cause. It is the only solution that measures the end-user experience 24x7 and correlates performance issues to their root cause in the Web infrastructure-inside and outside the firewall and in the application. As a result, organizations can ensure users are receiving solid performance and quickly resolve any infrastructure problems.

Mercury Interactive Corporation
Founded in 1989, Mercury Interactive is the leading provider of enterprise testing and application performance management solutions. The companys automated software and managed services help companies deliver and maintain high-performance applications. Customers worldwide use Mercury Interactive solutions across their application and technology infrastructures to minimize hardware and operational expenses, protect revenue streams and enhance their competitive positions.
   Mercury Interactive is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with offices in more than 20 countries. For more information, please visit www.mercury.com.

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Topaz is a trademark of Mercury Interactive Corporation, Sunnyvale, California. Other product and company names are used herein for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective companies.