Imperfect Diagnosis

By David Essex

July 2, 2001 12:00 PM ET

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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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