Mercury Interactive delivers first monitoring solution for desktop, last mile performance diagnostics

Mercury Interactive, the leading provider of enterprise testing and performance management solutions, has launched new components and capabilities for its Topaz application performance management (APM) solution.

This includes the Topaz Observer application performance monitor that finds and diagnoses performance problems from the desktop of actual users, even within the "last mile" of connectivity.

Along with Topaz Observer, the company has also announced the Topaz Open DataSource API that enables customers to integrate performance data from across the enterprise into a single view.

Mercury Interactive also unveiled the Topaz Console, which provides a single point of management for all of the modular APM components comprising the Topaz family, including both products and hosted services.

"These modular APM components can be mixed and matched to help IT staff tackle the specific performance and business requirements they have to keep their Web applications running at peak levels, ensuring the most positive end user experience," says Graeme Allcock, sales director for Mercury Interactive in SA.

"Topaz monitors and diagnoses performance problems both actively and passively, across clients, servers and networks, delivering all of the essential end user performance data to a single console for quick analysis and easy administration."

"Mercury Interactive continues to extend the range of our product technology and services to address new areas of applications performance management," says Dr Tim Grieser, research director for market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). "With the latest offerings, the company is enabling customers to monitor performance directly from end-user desktops, thus enabling IT to reach out and detect performance problems in the `last mile` connecting the end-user to the high-speed Internet."

Topaz finds the root cause of performance problems wherever they occur -- inside or outside the firewall, on servers, clients or on the network itself. "Topaz Observer is the first non-intrusive tool that can passively measure transaction performance from an actual user`s desktop so IT staff can correlate a user`s problem to bottlenecks occurring in the `last mile` connection, or with the client itself," explains Allcock. "In a typical scenario, a financial services company could install Topaz Observer agents on the desktops of its high net-worth customers, ensuring that these `gold` customers get the best Web experience possible."

The new Topaz Open DataSource API allows customers to integrate performance data from across the enterprise and bring it into the Topaz Console for more streamlined management. In addition to importing data from other third-party monitors, Topaz performance data can be exported to enterprise management consoles to leverage existing problem escalation procedures.

The modular Topaz solution gives IT staff the ability to mix and match the components that meet their specific performance management needs today, and allows them to scale those solutions over time. All Topaz components report performance data to the Topaz Console. This includes:

• .         Topaz ActiveAgent - Provides early warning of performance problems

• .         Topaz Prism - Passively monitors all users all the time with the ability to capture and quantify the business impact of the performance problem

• .         Topaz AIMs - Collects targeted back-end performance metrics

• .         Topaz Observer - Passive client, `last mile` monitoring to ensure quality experience

• .         Topaz WeatherMap - Proactively monitors Internet backbone peering performance ActiveWatch - Delivers hosted application performance management service

• .         Topaz Open DataSource - Integrates performance data from across the enterprise

• .         Topaz Diagnostics - Diagnoses the cause of end-user performance problems