‘Democratizing’ Enterprise-class Software

Software industry has changed; free PathView Cloud tool shows how

Not long ago, lots of software companies were focused on developing big solutions and selling them to the biggest customers they could. Board members and senior management wanted deal sizes that were high and trending higher. So field sales people went big game hunting.

With the focus on “big,” sales processes were long, involved and expensive affairs. They often involved expensive marketing programs at the front end. Next came multiple, in-person sales calls, six-to-nine month pilot programs and months-long implementation processes.

It all added up to a lot of time, money and energy being put forth before people actually experiencing a problem got the help they needed from the software that could solve their problem.

Over the past two to three years, this enterprise software sales model has been completely turned on its head. Companies are succeeding today by making more software – albeit in smaller packages – directly available to more people, more quickly and easily.  And these smaller tools are being offered at way more affordable price points – or often for free. It’s the democratization of the old enterprise model.

With our new PathView Cloud network management tool now available as a free hosted service, Apparent Networks has fully embraced the new software sales model.

For those who are not familiar with PathView, PathView is a new network management tool that measures the performance of complete network paths from source to destination, including segments that pass through service providers’ and carriers’ networks. PathView Cloud provides all the unique network visibility and management capabilities with the convenience and affordability of a hosted service.

We firmly believe that once customers experience what PathView Cloud delivers, they will eventually upgrade to our higher-level PathView product offerings.  But in the meantime, we’re perfectly happy to put the free PathView Cloud tool in customers’ hands so they can quickly get value form the product and solve some of their nagging network difficulties.

We think a little democracy in the software sales process is a very good thing.  It will let users resolve their problems more readily.  And it will ultimately help software development companies like Apparent Networks.

Four Words: Great Tool For Free

The headline says it all.  Today, Apparent Networks brings our new PathView Cloud network management tool to you for free.

PathView Cloud is a great tool for anyone involved in managing network infrastructure or the delivery of quality IT services. It monitors the performance of complete network paths from source to destination, including segments that pass through service providers’ and carriers’ networks. PathView Cloud provides the same network visibility and management capabilities with the convenience and flexibility of a hosted service.

So, how is this different from the PathView tool?

It actually provides you with all of the same capabilities for managing your network as PathView but with the flexibility and affordability of a hosted service. And, we’re no longer talking about a 30-day trial offer.  This is a free version of PathView Cloud with no strings attached. You can keep it and use it as long as you want.

PathView Cloud lets you test the performance of your distributed network quickly, easily and completely – including those third-party network segments you could never see into before.  Once you experience the unique network visibility and problem-solving capabilities PathView Cloud delivers, we’re sure you’ll want to check out our higher-level offerings.

But that’s a conversation for another day.  Today’s message is just four words:  Great tool for free.

Check it out at www.Apparenttools.com

The Most Basic Questions are Often the Hardest

This week we are releasing PathView 2.0, a major step forward in many areas of the product.

 There are two new capabilities that we are particularly excited about and I want to focus on today. The two new features of PathView 2.0  are so basic, so fundamental that I wonder why they haven’t been introduced in the 30+ years that network management tools have been around. As is often the case, it’s these fundamental questions that are the most difficult to answer.

The first is a question of bandwidth, from point A to point B how much bandwidth do I have, how much is used and how much do I have left?  This seems like a pretty basic question and something that you need to know, since there are likely cost and performance consequences if you get this wrong.

If point A and B are both on your network, you can theoretically answer this question today, although doing so is not trivial. But what if one of the points is not on your network, or more commonly, if part of the network path between A and B is not on your network? Your ability to answer this with traditional network management tools falls apart.

PathView 2.0 fills this hole in your network knowledge perfectly, using our patented technology to measure the end-to-end performance without impacting production applications, and adding new presentation methods making the answer to this fundamental question easier to understand. So now if a problem arises between your New York and Hong Kong offices (or anywhere else for that matter), you will be able to instantly tell if the network is saturated, regardless of how many different 3rd party networks are between.

As great as knowing the true end-to-end bandwidth capacity, there are many times when other areas of network performance are actually causing the problems. This is when the second fundamental question that PathView 2.0 answers becomes critical: How do I identify and diagnose transient performance problems?

A network problem can come and go very quickly, and unless you are watching the right location at the right time, they can be extremely difficult to pin down. The diagnostic engine within PathView has been super charged, so that problems are identified and diagnosed up to 600% faster than previous versions. So not only will PathView 2.0 show you bandwidth problems, duplex mismatches, routing loops, QoS changes and many other network problems will be identified faster than ever.  Try PathView 2.0 for free for 30 days and let us know what you think!

Virtual Network Performance

When companies were using virtualization technology to consolidate IT infrastructure that wasn’t truly real-time in nature, the network performance of these virtual machines was not a major concern. Generally, all they had to do was put a Gig E card into the host and everything would work itself out fine. All of the VM monitoring and management tools focused on CPU, memory and disk utilization and did not pay much attention to network performance. Sure the network performance for each VM was still atrocious, but that was overshadowed by all of the other efficiency gains of implementing VM technology.

With VM based deployments becoming the standard for infrastructure, the performance of virtual networks is becoming more critical. In PathView 2.0 we have filled a critical hole in the tools available for monitoring your VM infrastructure. Because our monitoring techniques traverse the network – both physical and virtual  and the same as users and applications accessing these VMs – we can accurately tell you how well, or poorly, your VM network performance is.

We spent a considerable amount of time tuning our monitoring and diagnostic capabilities so that our results are as accurate to VMs as they are to physical operating systems, and they are done in a way that does not impact production application performance. And because we can monitor to targets over networks that you do not own and or control, these same VM enhancements benefit our monitoring of cloud-based systems which are using virtualization technology at their core.

So for people running production VM environments or responsible for the network in VM-centric IT environments, PathView 2.0 should be a key addition to your monitoring tools. The capability to see through the cloud of your physical network, virtual switches and virtual network cards to monitor the true network performance of VM infrastructure and diagnose network problems anywhere along this path closes a critical gap in your IT toolkit.

Announcing PathView 2.0

As you may have seen from a press release earlier today PathView 2.0 is very near to release, and I wanted to give you a glimpse into what’s new in this major release. This is just a brief overview and there will be more detail on key features in this blog and on the ApparentTools.com site in the coming days and weeks.

PathView Report Server – PathView has some great information on your networks performance, and now you have an automated, scalable and customizable way to share that information with other users. PathView Report Server enables you to create or customize reports and dashboards through a simple web based drag-and-drop interface, then schedule these reports for automatic generation and delivery to any number of users.

Virtualization Support – This has been a major focus for us in 2.0, and there is more to come in the near future as we are now part of the VMware Technology Alliance. You can now run the PathView Server on VMware ESX and the performance analysis and diagnostics to VM targets is better than ever. Stay tuned for even more capability in the VM space in upcoming releases.

VoIP Enhancements – VoIP environments have been a strong point for PathView from day one, but 2.0 includes continuous VoIP specific analysis and diagnostics, so that voice specific metrics like MOS, Voice Loss and Voice Jitter are available at all times for Voice Paths.

QoS Enhancements – Support for QoS has also been enhanced in 2.0, so now you can actually see QoS values in the hop-by-hop breakdown provided with diagnostic tests. You can also model multiple paths between the same source and destination with different QoS values to directly correspond with different service levels between offices.

Performance Improvements – PathView’s diagnostic engine has also been enhanced so that problems are identified and diagnosed up to 600% faster. These performance gains enable you to resolve problems on slow WAN links many times faster than before with no drop off in accuracy.

PathView Team – Along with 2.0 we are also announcing new models of PathView to support larger customers’ network environments. PathView Team supports multiple, concurrent users, remote access to PathView and up to 40 network sequencers. If you have already purchased PathView and want to upgrade, you will get 100% trade in credit to upgrade for your current license towards PathView Team.

You can visit us at booth 1443 at VMWorld this week in San Francisco to learn more about these and other great features in PathView 2.0.

Apparent Networks Joins the VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program

As the IT climate accelerates toward more cost-effective, on demand services and cloud-based applications, managing your network performance and virtual service delivery is becoming more and more challenging. As Loki noted in a previous blog post, “The problems of network growth and complexity forecast some serious challenges ahead for virtualization.”

That is why PathView is excited to join the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) Program in an effort to respond to these new complexities and provide capabilities that will make your day to day job easier, faster and cheaper.

As we launch this new partnership with VMware we are also thrilled to be introducing PathView 2.0 which contains some great new capabilities to support virtual service delivery. We’ll unveil more details next week, but here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come:
•    VMWare ESX Support – now PathView components, including network sequencers can be installed in VMWare virtual machines, and our accuracy for both VM based and physical hosts is better than ever.
•    PathView Report Server – a major enhancement to the PathView reporting capability, the Report Server gives you drag and drop report and dashboard customization, report scheduling and 14 new reports.
•    300% performance increase in DPA diagnostics – problems on local and remote networks that used to take minutes to diagnose will now be done in seconds.
•    Continuous MOS Scores – voice specific measurements have been added to PathView’s continuous monitoring.
We will be joining our fellow VMware partners at VM World on August 31-September 3. Come check us out and see a demo of PathView 2.0 at Booth # 1443. Hope to see you there!

UK Provider of Network Products Joins the PathView Reseller Program

We are pleased to announce our newest strategic partner – Full Control Networks has just signed on as an authorized PathView reseller. Full Control Networks will be adding PathView to its portfolio of network management and troubleshooting tools.

Martin Fuller, FullControl Network’s Managing Director, said “With the move to distributed applications and cloud computing, our customers need better ways to ensure they are delivering reliable networked services.”

Full Control will offer PathView as a solution for delivering networked service in a virtual environment.

Stay tuned for upcoming announcements as we continue to expand our reseller program to support our worldwide users.

Network Engineering Partner Brings PathView Technology Worldwide…

We are excited to announce Apparent Networks’ first European partnership!

The PathView Reseller Program has officially expanded to the UK where we will be working with Kenson Network Engineering.  Kenson Network Engineering, Ltd, is a global provider of voice and data network solutions ranging from individual point solutions to enterprise-wide systems. Kenson is widely recognized for its expertise in delivering a full range of networking solutions and is a trusted partner to more than 650 customers.

Kenson will offer PathView to customers as an affordable, easy to download tool for  pre-deployment network assessments, real-time monitoring of critical network paths and for troubleshooting issues with carrier performance and cloud-based services.

The PathView Reseller Program gives participants an opportunity to provide their customers with a comprehensive technology to monitor their own environments; to assess the performance of their carrier’s and service provider’s networks; to find and fix network problems; and then to easily report out on network performance.

This is only the beginning…

Piercing the Virtual Veil: Monitoring the Performance of Virtualized Applications

In my last blog, I talked about some interesting parallels between virtualization and IP networking - both are essential technologies and yet suffer from poor visibility.  As virtualization has matured, the industry has scrambled to compensate for its blind spots.  However, most of the proposed solutions haven’t been particularly creative or effective.

Continuing to think about the parallels, an interesting possibility recently occurred to me:  Can PathView’s unique approach to probing and monitoring IP networks make a difference to virtualization?

PathView’s point and shoot magic applies equally well to network paths that terminate in a virtual machine at one or both ends.  The nature of IP packets means that, by our definition, the network path now extends up into the physical host, through the virtual network of the hypervisor (that includes the virtual switch), and well into the virtual machine.

This is the same path that any application traffic must take.  Any test packets traveling along this path will meet the same degradation in performance as those of the application.  By analyzing the behavior of test packets, it is possible to isolate the effects at Layers 1, 2 or 3 that impact end-to-end; all without having any special access to any of the intermediate devices, or even instrumenting the target.

How does this help monitoring virtualized systems?

If the end-to-end network shows clean, fast network performance, then there is no need to instrument or interrogate anything in-between or on the virtual host.  If there is a problem, it is possible to isolate the location in the Layer 3 network, determine if it is at the VM and even distinguish what sort of problem it is.  At this point, you know that you have a problem, whether it’s the network, VM or application, and even what kind of issue.

But that’s when it hit me – the virtual machine is handling packets as they pass through the virtual switch, the virtual NIC and driver.  And just like with any other network device, the overall health of the virtual machine is effectively impressed on the packets themselves.  As a virtual machine runs out of resources, or otherwise has difficulty performing, it will also have difficulties handling packets.  Packets will experience increasing levels of jitter and decreased capacity on the virtual segment of the end-to-end path.

In other words, the network path acts as the canary in the virtualized coalmine, signaling when the virtual environment degrades.

In applying the PathView’s end-to-end network path analysis to virtualization, several things are true:

• only the end-point IP address is needed
• end-to-end network performance means good VM performance
• if the virtual machine begins to degrade, it will show up on the packet timings
• if the virtual application moves, so does the monitoring path
• network path monitoring scales much better than device monitoring
• feedback is available in minutes, not hours

Not only does this approach simplify how you monitor your virtual infrastructure, and directly assures application performance, it solves the problem of monitoring 3rd party cloud infrastructure too.  Instead of having to put blind trust in your cloud provider to do the right thing, you can continuously monitor the performance remotely.  And call them on it if you need to.  It seems almost too easy…

In my next blog, I’ll write about what network monitoring can (and can’t) tell you about the state of virtualized applications.

Fix it Now Profile: Network Problem #1

Name and Job title: Jack Turek,  IT Network manager

Company: Fletcher-Thompson, Inc.
Architecture and Engineering design firm
http://www.fletcherthompson.com
Network Problem: 
As the network manager for a fast paced architecture and engineering firm, Jack is managing a system with five locations stretching the east coast from Florida to Connecticut. Unfortunately Jack didn’t have the capability to continuously monitor or truly understand the performance for each location and traffic between them. Therefore, he couldn’t respond to complaints from his end users because he couldn’t see where the problems were occurring.

How to fix it?
The PathView systems engineer worked with Jack to configure PathView to monitor to 2 of the locations; and set Service Quality Definitions to do Deep Path Analysis whenever they saw any packet loss or dip in expected bandwidth.  PathView was able to identify some congestion problems at one of the sites in particular. PathView’s troubleshooting and monitoring solutions provided insight into the location of the problem and the exact cause: running a backup program was eating up the limited bandwidth and effecting users – leading to complaints and problems across the network.

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Are you having a network problem? Need some help fixing it quickly? Sign up for the PathView Fix it Now program to get a free trial download and some one-on-one assistance.