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Symantec beefs up .NET support for monitoring, analyzing
By Colleen Frye
Symantec Corp. makes a strong play for the .NET application performance management (APM) market space with the release of version 8 of its i3 portfolio for monitoring, analyzing and diagnosing performance and availability bottlenecks. It is the first major release since Symantec acquired Veritas in 2004, according to the company.
In addition to beefed up .NET and SQL Server support, i3 8.0 features faster resolution of performance management problems; expanded ease of deployment and administration; and a new software development kit (SDK) that allows developers to extend application performance monitoring and management to custom and legacy applications.
According to Mike Harding, a senior product marketing manager in the APM group, the goal of the release is to enable faster resolution of application performance problems, but he said the growing enterprise market for .NET was also a driver for enhanced .NET functionality. “You’d have to have your head in the sand not to see the growth in the Windows space, particularly in APM,” he said. “It’s a natural evolution for the product. It’s more about making an investment in a growing space and evolving with our customers. We see more production environments moving to Windows and SQL Server.”
In i3 8.0, SmartLink, which identifies performance problems, and SmarTune, which provides expert advice for solving problems, now both support Microsoft SQL Server and .NET. The release also includes an expanded J2EE knowledgebase in the SmarTune library; easier deployment via a command line interface (CLI); and role-based administration capabilities; and the new SDK, said Sateesh Narahari, also a senior product marketing manager for APM.
“In my opinion this is the most significant release in their APM history,” said Brian Babineau, a senior analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass. “They’ve stabilized the business since Veritas was acquired. APM software is very hard to maintain and add value. You have to support so many permutations of Web server, application servers, .NET, Java EE, etc. When you get to a major release you have to make sure you can support all that you have the in past. I think they’ve done a pretty good job at getting this out, adding more capability. Some of the capabilities in 8 aren’t just nice-to-have features--they’re almost have-to-have if you want to maintain and keep the performance of your application infrastructure.”
In terms of .NET developers, “the SmartLink and SmarTune capabilities are the most appealing,” Babineau said. “Some other products identify what’s going wrong, but not a lot provide recommendations. [.NET developers] will be happy they won’t have to search through Microsoft support center Web sites or blogs to resolve issues; it’s all right there.”
Babineau also expects developers to significantly “kick the tires” on the new SDK. In addition to the almost 200 applications, databases, middleware OS versions i3 already supported, the new SDK will extend that support to custom and legacy environments.
“This goes back to how many permutations you have to support. Now customers can do their own development to make it support [additional environments]. They can start to look at historical systems. On the .NET side it will be interesting to see what that developer audience will do, such as with custom .NET applications. Definitely this crowd will look at it to see how good it is. Our lab guys haven’t tested it yet.”
Also in the fall, Symantec plans to offer new portlets with the Application Service Dashboard 2.0 to enable monitoring of Microsoft environments, including SQL Server and .NET, J2EE virtual machines, Oracle, and SAP. “It’s kind of an open source play, built on the Liferay portal,” Harding said.
In terms of competitors in the APM space, which include Quest and Avicode on the .NET side, Babineau said Symantec’s SmartLink and drilldown capabilities give i3 an edge. But as the .NET market continues to penetrate the enterprise, he expects more vendors to vie for a piece of the market.
“You’ve got HP and Mercury looking at these markets, and some emerging startups are taking a better look at ways to identify and do problem resolution across the application infrastructure,” Babineau said. “Symantec has bit of an advantage. On the .NET side I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft didn’t want to get into foray with their Systems Center technology in the future.”
Symantec i3 8.0 is now generally available. Pricing begins at $1500 per physical CPU.
For more information
http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/products/category.jsp?pcid=2246
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