Computerworld - Kevin Book, senior director of technology at The Motley Fool Inc., can easily recall the days before he had adequate tools to monitor his company's popular financial Web site, which attracts more than 2 million visitors per month. "Our online store actually ran out of disk [space]," he says. "We were unable to write orders. You can imagine what the guys in ties were thinking when that happened."
Like many IT managers today, Book is charged with keeping a Web infrastructure up and humming. He relies on an assortment of products for snapshots that, taken together, form a more or less complete picture. Some, like the Tivoli Enterprise Console from Tivoli Systems Inc. in Austin, Texas, provide trouble alerts and event logs. Others, such as Patrol 2000 from BMC Software Inc. in Houston, monitor major elements such as servers, applications and databases. Additional tools, including SiteScope from Freshwater Software Inc. in Boulder, Colo., and the Web-based performance services from Keynote Systems Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., specifically test page downloads and other Web transactions and compare them to industry benchmarks.
Software Tools
Fenway
Starts at $15,000 to $30,000
Dirig Software Inc.
Nashua, N.H.
www.dirig.com
HP OpenView
Starts at $23,900 for Operations console, $230 per node
Hewlett-Packard Co.
www.hp.com
Patrol
Separate Predict and Perform versions for Oracle ($290 and $390 per server, respectively) and Unix ($395 and $875); Storage Resource Manager (starts at $40,000);
Service Level Management (starts at $5,000 plus $195 per managed node; Windows versions start at $815)
Site Angel
Starts at $900 per year
BMC Software Inc.
Houston
www.bmc.com
Peakstone eAssurance
$48,000 plus $4,800 annually per Web server CPU
Peakstone Corp.
Sunnyvale, Calif.
www.peakstone.com
Silk Performer
Starts at $25,000
Silk Test
Starts at $6,500
Segue Software Inc.
Lexington, Mass.
www.segue.com
SiteScope
$995 for 25 monitors
Freshwater Software Inc.
Boulder, Colo.
www.freshwatersoftware.com
Tivoli Enterprise Console
Approximately $300 per node
Tivoli Systems Inc.
Austin, Texas
www.tivoli.com
Unicenter TNG
Starts at $2,500
Computer Associates
International Inc.
Islandia, N.Y.
www.ca.com
— David Essex
"We're running better, we're running faster, and we're running bigger with the same number of staff," Book says. Still, he adds, "it's difficult to get down to one product." Some tools, such as Tivoli and Patrol, share data, but "it would be nice to have a truly unified view," Book says.
Jeb Bolding, a senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates Inc. (EMA) in Boulder, Colo., agrees with that assessment. "It's still difficult to get a complete, end-to-end view," he says. "They all say they've got one, and no one really does."
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