NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DENNIS DROGSETH ON NETWORK/SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT 10/11/04 Today's focus: Delivering WAN-ready applications with Shunra
Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED], In this issue: * Shunra tools help developers match applications to WAN * Links related to Network/Systems Management * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by International Network Services Free Guide: IP Management Best Practices � Learn how to optimize network efficiency, improve performance, reduce downtime, and realize an ROI of 500% or more by automating manual IP Address Management processes. Get the facts in the FREE IT Professional's Guide to Next Generation IP Address Management. Includes instructive whitepaper, webinar, and more. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=83758 _______________________________________________________________ Security Event : DEFENDING IN DEPTH Security: The vulnerability that paralyzes enterprise. Exposes assets. Drains capital. Compromises users. And terrifies management. It's your network's Achilles heel - but it doesn't have to be your downfall. Register today to find out how to protect yourself. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84839 _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: Delivering WAN-ready applications with Shunra By Dennis Drogseth While the term "application lifecycle management" is not new, it's usually associated with large vendors that have a portfolio of separate products sold to separate IT constituencies. And while it would be, in all fairness, a stretch to claim that a little company called Shunra Software is providing application lifecycle management with only two products, Shunra has tackled a very significant problem from a lifecycle perspective: distributed application performance over WANs. Moreover, Shunra has brought a simplicity of deployment to this challenge that in some organizations is causing, say, network operations teams to actually create "road shows" proselytizing the advantages of Shunra's products to application developers, testers and quality assurance groups. Of course, they're not doing this out of a sense of civic duty; they're doing it because they're tired of paying a price for failed expectations in service levels and expensive adjustments to bandwidth-hungry applications that really never were designed to work on their networks in the first place. Shunra's product suite includes Virtual Enterprise, aimed at operations pre-deployment with some support for post-deployment, QA and testing; and Virtual Network Desktop Edition, aimed at application developers. The suite enables what Shunra calls "the WAN on your LAN" and takes a unique approach to packet analytics to capture real parameters reflecting jitter, latency and bandwidth throttling where packets can be delayed, dropped, fragmented, duplicated and congested. It does this between targeted end-user desktops in remote, distributed locations and targeted application servers. Shunra's approach is to replicate this dynamic to enable evaluation under various scenarios, such as best-case or worst-case parameters in a WAN-emulation appliance. It can also provide ongoing monitoring of WAN behavior to see how applications will continue to perform, to verify if fixes are actually effective, and to gain insight when network changes may affect current application designs. This is an agentless approach in which decisions can be made to, for instance, modify the WAN to accommodate application performance, to "right-size" the wide area if it is over-provisioned, to perform "what-if" scenarios to more proactively evaluate application performance, or to seek opportunities for cost savings. Needless to say, these values - particularly the "what-if" capabilities - can provide clear benefits for QA and testing. Desktop Edition is designed specifically for the application developer, to recreate WAN conditions at the developer's desktop. In some deployments, Desktop Edition is used to share common test scenarios with app developers, testers, QA and operations staging. Many of Shunra's IT customers are motivated to buy Virtual Enterprise when ineffective application deployments approach becoming disasters. And project-driven requirements - such as data-center consolidations or application rollouts - are also natural, if momentary, incentives. More sophisticated customers see more ongoing value in using Shunra to ensure that service commitments with customers are viable and that expectations are appropriate. It is worth mentioning that a growing number of network equipment manufacturers and enterprise application vendors also use Shunra products for testing out the performance of their devices or applications before they go on the market. Shunra - the word is Aramaic for "wildcat" - is an Israeli company that has been on a steady growth path since it was founded in 1997 but is still relatively small. Its products are evolving in their visualization and reporting capabilities and overall functionality, but Shunra's Virtual Enterprise is well beyond early-adopter-stage tools. Enterprise Management Associates has seen fast and successful deployments, with price ranges from $10,000 to $250,000 for desktop through enterprise. RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS Kerry crowd drowns out Bush backers at IT show Network World, 10/11/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/101104vortex.html Back-up protection on tap from storage vendors Network World, 10/11/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/101104replica.html _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Dennis Drogseth Dennis Drogseth is a vice president with Enterprise Management Associates <http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/>, a leading analyst, market research and IT consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado, focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise management. Dennis has extensive experience in service level management and network management platforms and products. He is actively researching trends in management software and changing IT roles internationally. His 22-plus years of experience in high-tech includes positions at IBM and Cabletron. He is widely quoted in the press and is a speaker at many industry events. He can be reached via e-mail <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84679 _______________________________________________________________ ARCHIVE LINKS Archive of the Network/Systems Management newsletter: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/nsm/index.html _______________________________________________________________ The numbers are in - ROI in convergence Learn how to improve productivity within your IT department by 45%, reduce travel of your IT staff by 42%, enhance remote access, and reduce training for your IT staff. Watch this webcast now. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84840 _______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE THE NEW DATA CENTER Today's top companies are accelerating toward Web-based computing. That means building the new data center -- where grids, virtualization, autonomic computing and other big changes shatter the traditional boundaries on applications and information, and bring the extended enterprise to life. Learn about The New Data Center on NW Fusion's Research Center at: <http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/datacenter.html> _______________________________________________________________ May We Send You a Free Print Subscription? You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered at your fingertips each day. Now, extend your knowledge by receiving 51 FREE issues to our print publication. 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