Tech & Tools Watch, November 7: BlueStripe, Netwrix, Riverbed Technology
BlueStripe Embeds App Monitor into System Center, Windows Azure Pack
BlueStripe Software is now offering its Performance Center tool as a management pack for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager. The company earlier this year released the dashboard component of FactFinder, which monitors distributed applications across numerous modern and legacy platforms.
With the addition of Performance Center, the company has embedded its core FactFinder tool into System Center. FactFinder can monitor everything from mainframe infrastructure including CICS and SAP R3 transactions, along with applications running on Unix, Linux and Windows infrastructures. BlueStripe said it provides visibility and the root causes of performance to application components on physical, virtual and cloud environments. It works with third-party public cloud services, as well.
FactFinder integrates Operation Manager workflows, providing data such as response times, failed connections, application loads and server conditions, the company said. It also maps all business transactions by measuring performance across each hop of a given chain and is designed to drill into the server stack to determine the cause of a slow or failing transaction.
In addition to the new System Center Management Pack, BlueStripe launched Performance Center for the Windows Azure Pack, which is designed to provide administrators common visibility of their Windows Server and Microsoft Azure environments. This lets administrators and application owners monitor the performance via the Windows Azure Pack.
BlueStripe Marketing Manager Dave Mountain attended last week's TechEd Conference in Barcelona and said he was surprised at the amount of uptake for the Windows Azure Pack. "There's a recognition of the need for IT to operate in a hybrid cloud world," Mountain said. "IT's reason for existing is to ensure the delivery of business services. Tools that allow them to focus on app performance will be valuable and that's what we are doing with FactFinder Performance Center for Windows Azure Pack."
Netwrix Tackles Insider Threats with Auditor Upgrade
Netwrix Corp. has upgraded its auditing software to offer improved visibility to insider threats, while warning of data leaks more quickly. The new Netwrix Auditor 6.5 offers deeper monitoring of log files and privileged accounts, which in turn provides improved visibility to changes made across a network, including file servers and file shares.
The new release converts audit logs into more human readable formats, according to the company. It also lets IT managers and systems analysts audit configurations from any point in time, while providing archives of historical data against which to match. Netwrix said this ensures compliance with security policies and thwarting rogue employees from making unauthorized changes.
In all, Netwrix said it has added more than 30 improvements to the new release of Auditor, resulting in higher scalability and performance.
Riverbed Extends Visibility and Control
Riverbed Technology this week launched the latest version of its SteelHead WAN optimization platform, including a new release of its SteelCentral AppResonse management tool to monitor hybrid environments, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps.
Core to the new SteelHead 9.0 is its tight integration with SteelCentral AppResponse, which Riverbed said simplifies the ability to troubleshoot applications using the app's analytics engine, making it easier to manage such processes as policy configuration, patch management, reporting and troubleshooting. The SteelCentral dashboard lets administrators track performance of applications, networks, quality of service and reports on how policies are maintained.
SteelCentral AppResponse 9.5 also gives administration metrics on end-user experiences of traditional and SaaS-based apps, even if they're not optimized by the SteelHead WAN platform. Riverbed said providing this information aims to let IT groups respond to business requirements and issues causing degraded performance. The new SteelHead 9.0 also is designed to ensure optimized performance of Office 365 mailboxes.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 11/07/2014 at 10:50 AM