Altaworks Panorama 1.5 Advances J2EE Performance Management and Offers Expanded Support for IBM WebSphere and DB2

Business Wire, May 7, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

SAN FRANCISCO & NASHUA, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2002

New Release of Performance Management Software for Application

Server Environments Extends Probable-cause Analysis to Method Level

At the annual IBM DeveloperWorks Live conference, Altaworks Corporation, (www.altaworks.com), a leading developer of performance and availability management software for application server environments, such as those built on IBM WebSphere(R), today announced the release of Panorama(TM) 1.5. With this latest version, Altaworks advances its leadership in managing J2EE application server environments by pioneering the industry's first capability for automating the detection of probable causes of performance problems down to the method level. Altaworks has also expanded its management of IBM-based environments by adding support for IBM WebSphere 4.0 and IBM's Performance Monitoring Infrastructure (PMI) API and by enhancing it's monitoring of IBM's DB2(R) database. The advanced capabilities in this latest version of Altaworks' flagship solution enable IT administrators and developers to achieve an unprecedented level of insight and analysis for optimizing the performance of their application server environments.

Altaworks Panorama helps companies monitor and analyze eBusiness infrastructures holistically by measuring actual, live transactions and correlating their performance with the health of critical systems, such as application servers, in order to avoid downtime and lost business. While monitoring the performance of these critical systems and environments, Panorama provides in-depth, automated, probable-cause analysis to help companies identify and strengthen the weak points of their eBusiness infrastructures to ensure maximum optimization of eBusiness transactions.

With the release of Panorama 1.5, users can now receive automated probable-cause alerts for individual methods that include performance information such as average execution time, invocations, and exceptions. Such granularity radically speeds up the troubleshooting process because IT operations personnel no longer have to wait on application developers to hunt and peck for the offending methods - Altaworks Panorama finds them. Panorama also benefits quality-assurance and testing personnel by visually correlating the real-time effect of a test load on all distributed application tiers at the system process, method and class level.

"The new release of Altaworks Panorama extends the range and granularity of performance measurement and analysis to now include the J2EE method level," said Tim Grieser, research director at IDC. "This means that Altaworks' monitoring, correlation, and probable-cause analysis approach can be used to penetrate more deeply into application server environments, such as those built on IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic, in order to help IT avoid downtime, diagnose slow performance, and prevent lost business."

Altaworks Panorama 1.5 also brings expanded management of IBM technologies to the market. With the new release, Panorama is one of the first companies to support IBM's PMI initiative. PMI is a set of packages and libraries designed to assist with the gathering, delivering, processing and displaying of performance data in WebSphere application servers. Coupled with Panorama's patent-pending WebSphere instrumentation, Panorama's PMI support enables users to obtain the broadest and deepest insight available for WebSphere application server performance. Panorama 1.5 also adds more granular DB2 management, specifically in the areas of locking, sorting and tablespace monitoring.

"The functionality as seen in Altaworks Panorama 1.5 is a good example of how IBM and leading companies like Altaworks work together via the IBM Initiative for Emerging Technology Developers to deliver innovative technologies and enter new markets," said Cynthia Erdman, Director of Strategy and Business Development, IBM Developer Relations.

Altaworks also delivered new functionality that takes Panorama's renowned probable- cause analysis to the next level. With Panorama 1.5, users not only benefit from built-in cause analysis but also have the option of working with Altaworks' Professional Services and a new modeling tool for creating additional or custom probable-cause scenarios for their unique applications.

"No other management solution for J2EE environments provides the power and convenience of built-in probable-cause analysis as well as the flexibility to create custom probable-cause identification scenarios," said Steve McCalmont, CEO of Altaworks Corp. "The result is the industry's most comprehensive ability to identify the true causes of application server environment performance slowdowns without having to manually sift through thousands of individual performance metric alerts."

About Altaworks Corporation

Headquartered in Nashua, NH, Altaworks is a leading developer of performance and availability management software for distributed, Web-based application server environments such as those built on IBM WebSphere(R) (NYSE:IBM) and BEA WebLogic(TM) (NasdaqNM:BEAS). The company's flagship product, Altaworks Panorama, was built from the ground up to give companies unprecedented visibility into the performance of live transactions and their supporting systems and applications. The Altaworks solution monitors actual, live transaction response times and correlates these key indicators with the potential causes of performance problems. Altaworks gives companies the ability to maximize their current eBusiness infrastructure investments by efficiently troubleshooting business transaction slowdowns that can lead to lost business. Founded in late 1999, Altaworks is backed by strategic financial partners St. Paul Venture Capital, Prism Venture Partners and YankeeTek Ventures, and has raised more than $27 million in two rounds of funding.