Network Instruments® and NetQoS® Announce Strategic Alliance to Deliver Network Performance Monitoring and Retrospective Network Analysis

Business Wire, Dec 13, 2006

New Solution Speeds Time to Resolution by Quickly Identifying Network Degradations Enterprise-Wide and Drilling Down to Root Causes Through Historical Analysis

MINNEAPOLIS & AUSTIN, Texas -- Network Instruments and NetQoS Inc. today announced a strategic partnership to deliver a unified solution for managing enterprise networks for application performance and quickly identifying the root cause of any network degradation through retrospective network analysis (RNA).

Network Instruments, provider of innovative network analysis solutions, offers the ability to collect and store all packets traversing the network for back-in-time analysis with its GigaStor([TM]) appliance. NetQoS, provider of network performance management software and services for Global 4000 companies, offers the ability to identify the source of the application, server, and network performance problems, and to automatically launch investigations that gather diagnostic information specific to the issue via its SuperAgent([R]) product.

"The partnership of Network Instruments and NetQoS is a natural fit that will effectively address growing challenges faced by IT staffs," said Elisabeth Rainge, director of network and service management for IDC. "As network problems evolve in complexity, so have IT departments. Different network engineers are tackling the same network issues from different ends of the IT spectrum. Bringing together the application performance monitoring strengths of NetQoS with the value of Network Instruments' retrospective network analysis solution, not only reduces the amount of tools required but breaks down IT silos allowing engineers greater collaborative opportunities."

Together, the new offering will show not only when and where network performance degraded, but also how and why that degradation occurred. The partnership emerged from customer requests to provide an integrated toolset that allows engineers to move seamlessly between the enterprise view of network and application performance and retrospective network analysis for easier and faster problem resolution.

"Our customers find our automatic investigations to be a huge time-saver when troubleshooting problems," said Scott Sherwood, vice president of worldwide sales for NetQoS. "In partnering with Network Instruments, we are expanding this capability to provide the retrospective network analysis against the continuous packet capture that will be stored to disk. This allows an engineer, for example, to review network traffic 30 minutes before an event or 30 minutes after, as well as perform expert analysis to quickly determine the proper resolution. No other products on the market provide such comprehensive capabilities for proactive performance management."

The unified solution will provide a comprehensive enterprise view to proactively manage network and application availability and performance through the NetQoS SuperAgent. Upon receiving an alert from SuperAgent identifying the time and location of a network problem, Network Instruments GigaStor's unique time-based navigation will quickly sort through massive amounts of traffic to identify the root cause and resolution for the problem. In addition to providing critical RNA capabilities, GigaStor can reassemble packet streams to recreate e-mails sent and received, web pages visited, IM sessions, and VoIP calls.

"The truth is while other companies have promised seamless integration between performance monitoring and deep-packet inspection, it has been more marketing spin than engineering," said Bruce Clark, vice president of sales at Network Instruments. "Different IT departments view different points of the network, some are concerned with network performance and application availability, others are managing VoIP, and others are concerned with protocols and packets. NetQoS and Network Instruments work well with these different groups, and -- now by teaming up, we can integrate our solutions to provide the complete, end-to-end network view our mutual customers need in a single offering."

Product integration will be completed in the first half of 2007. And effective immediately, NetQoS will sell Network Instruments' GigaStorthrough its direct sales organization worldwide. To learn more, contact Network Instruments by calling 800-526-7919 or visiting http://www.networkinstruments.com. To contact NetQoS, call 877-835-9575 or visit: http://www.netqos.com.

NetQoS SuperAgent

NetQoS SuperAgent is a performance monitoring solution that passively analyzes end-to-end response time - without desktop or server agents. SuperAgent tracks response times for all TCP transactions, 24x7, and identifies application, network, and server delay components, enabling rapid troubleshooting of application performance bottlenecks. It also measures user throughputs, loss rates, byte rates, session refusals, and other metrics. SuperAgent automatically detects issues by comparing performance metrics to both self-learned baselines and user-configured thresholds. In addition, it automatically investigates issues, as they occur to provide engineers with timely, relevant diagnostic information to speed problem resolution. IT organizations can use SuperAgent to analyze application performance whether they manage their own network infrastructure or rely on a service provider.