Symantec Expands Its Application Performance Management Portfolio

Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced the expansion of its end-to-end Application Performance Management (APM) solution, which proactively monitors, analyzes and diagnoses performance and availability bottlenecks that impact business-critical applications. Symantec's new Application Service Dashboard allows IT organizations to easily customize Symantec i3 performance and service-level metrics via a single, portal-based dashboard, enabling IT staff members to maximize their efficiency in supporting today's multi-tier business applications. Symantec also announced enhancements to Symantec Insight Inquire, a monitoring solution designed to track availability and performance of critical Web applications.

These products provide a strong complement to the Symantec i3 product family, which tightly integrates the collection, correlation, and performance tuning advice relevant to the performance of multi-tier enterprise applications. Symantec's APM solution is a key component of the Symantec Data Center Foundation, an integrated family of data protection, storage management, server management, and application performance management solutions.

"IT organizations are under pressure to meet stringent service level agreements for application availability and performance, while being squeezed to hold down head count and costs," said Richard L. Ptak, a principal analyst with Ptak, Noel and Associates. "Symantec's comprehensive APM solution, which now includes the Application Service Dashboard and enhancements to Insight Inquire, provides customers with an integrated, end-to-end view of application performance and availability across the network."

Symantec Application Service Dashboard: An Extensible, Customizable Performance View

The Symantec Application Service Dashboard aggregates performance data from multiple sources to present a comprehensive, integrated view of application performance from a single screen. Built on the open portal standard JSR-168, Symantec Application Service Dashboard can be easily extended to display customer-specific data from other sources compliant with the JSR-168 standard. It offers additional distinct advantages including:

--  Easy customization: Users can easily customize the dashboard to their
    specific job function with just a few mouse clicks.  Separating the
    dashboard's presentation layer from its data collection and aggregation
    functionality eliminates the need for users to learn a complex scripting
    language.
--  Increased user productivity: Users can view the performance of
    multiple applications and database instances in a consolidated environment,
    and no longer need to switch between different views to investigate
    potential issues.  As a result, users can work more effectively and
    productively.

Symantec Insight Inquire Provides Expanded Support and Lower TCO

Symantec Insight Inquire delivers agentless Web application monitoring to ensure performance and availability of business-critical applications. Through user-simulated business transactions and component diagnostics of multi-tier applications, Insight Inquire ensures that the application is available and sending the correct information. In the event of an outage or a failure to meet a Service Level Agreement (SLA), Insight Inquire automatically pinpoints the infrastructure component that caused the problem. By continuously testing system robustness, Insight Inquire helps enterprise IT organizations ascertain that critical Web systems are continuously running, serving customers, and delivering business value at the highest performance levels. Enhancements in version 3.0 include:

--  An embedded database for collecting performance data, streamlining
    deployment, and reducing associated costs;
--  Simplified installation and overall usability;
--  Broader support for ERP-based applications including Oracle Apps, SAP,
    Siebel, and PeopleSoft;
--  Business transaction recording and playback capabilities test
    application availability on a scheduled basis, without requiring
    complicated scripting or manual content and response check coding.
    Enhancements offer improved reliability, accuracy, and ease-of-use.

"Today's enterprise relies on multi-tier applications for critical business operations, but pinpointing the source of performance problems can be challenging due to complex interactions across the application transaction path," said Rob Greer, director of product marketing, Server Foundation and APM product group at Symantec Corp. "Symantec's end-to-end APM solution, comprised of i3, Insight Inquire, and Application Service Dashboard delivers the full spectrum of application performance management capabilities."

Availability and Pricing

Symantec Application Service Dashboard, Insight Inquire and i3 are all immediately available through Symantec's certified value-added resellers and direct sales force. Suggested pricing for tools within the Application Performance Management solution include: