Micromuse enhances asset and event management

Micromuse Inc., the leading provider of business and service assurance software, today announced two distinct product releases within its Netcool/Precision product family; Netcool/Precision for IP Networks v3.3 and Netcool/Precision for Transmission Networks v5.3. With these releases, Micromuse offers auto-discovery and dynamic topology/connectivity modeling of both IP and transmission networks. The expanded Netcool/Precision product family now offers dynamic network asset and inventory management, topology visualization and mapping, and topology-based event correlation (RCA).

The Netcool/Precision Family "Enables Asset and Fault Management" Netcool/Precision for IP Networks and Netcool/Precision for Transmission Networks use advanced auto-discovery techniques and agents to gather information about the components and overall design of the complex networked infrastructures, including assets and inventory, device capacity, utilization, port/circuit provisioning state, active services, and connectivity. This information is stored in an open, accessible relational database, allowing asset reporting and reconciliation with inventory, provisioning and billing processes. When integrated with Netcool/Impact, information in the asset data store can be enriched with company-specific data stored elsewhere (e.g. customer impact information), to create a more detailed, realtime view of a company`s network inventory. Additionally, information in the dynamic IP network topology model can be used with Netcool/OMNIbus to perform topology-based event correlation (RCA).

The expanded Netcool/Precision family delivers a distinctive set of business benefits including:

* CapEx/OpEx reduction and revenue recovery: Enables users to validate invoices, leases, and maintenance to avoid unnecessary charges; detect out-of-service assets with associated maintenance payments; and detect active services that are not being billed or are under billed.

* Increased cost control and cost savings: Enables users to measure asset utilization, recapture stranded and lost assets, identify network deviations and circuit configurations, and monitor both authorized and unauthorized network changes.

* Increased security and business protection: Enables users to detect unauthorized connectivity, changes, or security breaches.

* Audit assurance: Helps users ensure accurate reporting on assets.

"Micromuse is stepping up to next-generation design requirements by making investments in critical enabling technologies - such as topological awareness and autodiscovery, and root cause analytics - through its enhancements to Netcool/Precision and other products in its Netcool suite," said Dennis Drogseth, Vice President, Enterprise Management Associates. "Through today`s announcements in asset and inventory management, Micromuse is addressing a significant set of interdependencies between infrastructure awareness and infrastructure control - that can help both IT and OSS take a firmer hand in managing their investments as performing contributors to the broader business. Broad demand for these solutions reflects the fact that strong common requirements are emerging across the service provider and enterprise markets, as service providers seek more support for application-related services and enterprise IT departments move to model themselves more effectively as internal "service-providers."

"With realtime, accurate, and deep infrastructure visibility, companies are able to drive down costs by accelerating mean-time-to-repair (MTTR), as well as by locating stranded or de-provisioned assets," said Brent Compton, Micromuse`s Vice President of Product Management. "The Netcool/Precision product family offers highly accurate collection, correlation, analysis and visualization tools to help organizations more fully understand the layout of their network and the impact of events happening within it."

Netcool/Precision for IP Networks v3.3 is the most recent integrated release of Micromuse and RiverSoft technology. Netcool/Precision for IP Networks dynamically discovers network devices and their associated layer 2 physical connectivity - as well as their logical relationships at layer 3 - and provides additional support for VLANs, ATM, Frame Relay, and MPLS. The resulting topology database can be used for asset and inventory reporting and, when combined with Netcool/OMNIbus, provides the underlying intelligence for topology-based event correlation (RCA). Netcool/Precision for IP Networks also maps the network topology in a visual diagram that shows the connections between devices, down to the port level. Version 3.3 focuses on deepening the integration with Netcool/OMNIbus, adding greater VLAN RCA modeling, and simplifying configuration and user GUIs. The intrinsic knowledge within the product enables administrators to resolve problems more quickly, before they cause serious network outages or impact availability of service and business processes. Customers using Netcool/Precision for IP Networks have reported clearer visibility of their infrastructure and reductions in network downtime of up to 65%.

Netcool/Precision for Transmission Networks v5.3 is the first integrated release of Micromuse and Lumos technology, performing deep, on-going discovery of layer 1 network devices. It uses this Layer 1 information to build a global view of the entire transmission network, element by element, including the physical inventory (racks, cards and ports) and logical resources (termination points and cross-connects) of each element to derive the topological connections between network elements and customer circuits or subnetwork connections. When used in conjunction with Netcool/OMNIbus, Netcool/Precision for Transmission Networks allows users to quickly identify and visualize the physical location of Layer 1 network problems, by visually depicting the backplane of an affected device and highlighting the specific card and port that caused the alarm.

Availability, pricing information, analyst and customer references, and screen shots are available upon request. Netcool/Precision for IP Networks v3.3 runs on Solaris. Netcool/Precision for Transmission Networks v5.3 runs on Sun Microsystems Solaris, Hewlett-Packard`s HP-UX, IBM AIX, Microsoft Windows XP and Linux.

Please visit the Micromuse Web site to read the latest Micromuse White Paper from Enterprise Management Associates on Netcool`s Next Generation Solutions: http://www.micromuse.com/downloads/pdf_lit/analysts/EMA_may2003_Micromuse_Profile.pdf