With explosion of consumer devices, IT finds greater need for network management tools

Computerworld - The rapid addition of consumer tablets and smartphones to corporate networks has created a greater demand for network-based application traffic analysis tools.

AppNeta, an application performance management software vendor, recently announced a cloud-based approach for its software-as-a-service offering called PathView Cloud.

The tool, which runs on top of AppNeta's existing FlowView service, is designed to provide IT teams with information for analyzing network traffic and troubleshooting performance problems.

AppNeta, in a statement, cited Bill Gillis, an IT manager of clinical application services at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center In Boston, as an early user of the service. Prior to using PathView Cloud with FlowView, Gillis said IT used to spend weeks trying to find the causes of mysterious performance problems, but the new tools were able to pinpoint issues quickly and proved to be a great "bang for the buck."

Gillis said AppNeta went beyond the traditional capabilities found in tools based on NetFlow, a network protocol for traffic analysis created by Enterasys Networks and Cisco.

Cliff Chapman, CEO of LinkStatus, a U.K.-based company that provides network application performance management for customers, said he had similar success using AppNeta's FlowView technology to find the causes of network performance problems for 35 businesses in the U.K., many with global networks.

Sometimes, Chapman said his corporate customers will use AppNeta's detailed network performance reports provided by LinkStatus to point out a problem with a WAN router to a telecom carrier, with good results.

"We can pinpoint problems hop-by-hop through the network for carriers, and say which router is causing problems," Chapman said in an interview. "With the AppNeta reports, the telco got the problem fixed right away."

Chapman said AppNeta's technology has an easy-to-use interface that can describe precisely which apps are causing network slowdowns.

In the past two years, Chapman said, he's been able to replace other network management tools with AppNeta and save money. Overall, he said AppNeta technology has been "extremely inexpensive," costing his company $100,000 a year in service costs only. He said he was spending more with various other systems.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

Read more about Networking in Computerworld's Networking Topic Center.