How does OPNET define application performance management and optimization?

OPNET defines application performance management and optimization more broadly than most solution vendors. The end-to-end performance of networked applications depends on complex interactions among applications, servers, and networks. Effective application performance management requires taking a true "end-to-end" view by understanding the application from these multiple perspectives.

In OPNET's view, performance management is needed throughout the application lifecycle, beginning with development and QA, and continuing through deployment and operations. A comprehensive strategy requires analytics that enable both rapid troubleshooting and proactive prevention of problems.

Please diagram how OPNET's architectural approach enables application performance management.

Figure 1. OPNET's APM architecture leverages instrumentation across multiple advanced analytic engines

OPNET's application performance management architecture involves instrumenting the application environment, and leveraging this instrumentation across multiple advanced analytic engines to quickly diagnose problems and produce actionable results. It applies to applications in the production environment, as well as to application development and QA.

ACE Live delivers an end-to-end solution that spans monitoring, measurement, and detection of application performance violations, providing visibility of all transactions and users across the enterprise. The appliance based solution provides real-time and historical information about performance, utilization, route quality, ISP performance, and end-user response times. ACE Live detects service level violations and uncovers the root-cause of application performance problems, via a seamless integration with ACE Analyst.

ACE Analyst performs in-depth transaction analysis to diagnose root causes of end-to-end delay, presenting recommendations for tuning application and network parameters to resolve bottlenecks and improve performance. It is unique in its ability to automatically synchronize and merge traces captured from multiple application tiers that comprise a single transaction, isolating factors that contribute to delay such as network congestion and application processing. Dependencies among application messages are represented graphically, with drill-down to specific messages to determine cause and effect. ACE Analyst provides application-specific analysis, with 700+ application and network decodes.

OPNET Panorama provides real-time performance analysis of complex Java/.NET applications, monitoring thousands of system and application metrics within each server, across multiple tiers. Panorama automatically spots performance anomalies with advanced deviation tracking and correlation technologies, pinpointing symptoms that might otherwise go undetected. ACE Analyst and Panorama analyses targeting the same transaction can be coordinated for a more complete understanding of application performance. SLA Commander monitors web application performance from the end-user perspective. When performance thresholds are exceeded, the monitored transaction in SLA Commander is automatically captured for root cause analysis in ACE Analyst.

What are the core differentiators/unique attributes of OPNET's approach vs. others in the industry?

Traditional approaches focus on data collection and monitoring, tracking network status and reporting historical trends. They are largely reactive, whereas OPNET also focuses on problem prevention.

OPNET's approach focuses on analytics, and managing application performance from multiple perspectives. OPNET algorithms embed expert knowledge about how applications, network devices, protocols, and systems behave and interact.

OPNET analytics are employed proactively during development and QA as well as in production. Our solutions enable predictive "what if" analysis that can be applied before new applications are rolled out or fixes are deployed. In a virtual model, applications can be recoded, network bandwidth adjusted, or network parameters tuned to accurately predict the impact of such changes, thereby optimizing application performance while avoiding ineffective fixes and costly mistakes.

How does OPNET address the particular management and scale needs of the enterprise?

Scale is important in three respects. First, instrumentation is key to ensuring broad coverage for a production environment. Second, scalable analysis is needed to derive actionable conclusions from very large amounts of data. Third, the operation of a solution must be automated where practical to minimize the impact on the IT staff.

ACE Live monitors all data traversing across the network in real-time and provides complete visibility into the end-users’ experience. Response time issues are automatically broken down into the key components; network, server or application and web-based reports present data in a business context for troubleshooting purposes.

ACE Analyst is provided with unlimited data collectors to obtain application traces from clients and servers. Secure and lightweight, they are ideal for large scale deployments. For intermittent performance problems, ACE Analyst automates continuous or scheduled packet captures. ACE captures and agents can be managed from a centralized server. It is common for ACE agents to be deployed on thousands of desktops and servers. ACE Enterprise Management Server provides centralized agent management and end-user-driven captures, via a web browser interface accessible from anywhere.

SLA Commander is also provided with unlimited agents, and can be deployed throughout the enterprise to monitor web application response time.

OPNET Panorama scales to support complex applications, automatically monitoring and analyzing thousands of application and system metrics, and dynamically establishing performance thresholds for alarming.

Increasingly, applications are being deployed using SOA techniques. How does OPNET address these emerging technologies?

The critical need of many organizations today is to understand how to design SOA applications. These generate modular, multi-tier transactions. ACE Analyst performs in-depth analysis of complex, multi-tier transactions, and can be leveraged prior to application deployment to optimize performance.

A "virtual" transaction can be created in ACE Analyst based on the application design to analyze its application-layer logic and behavior. ACE Analyst includes analytics for web services, HTTP, UDDI, SOAP, and other SOA and Web 2.0 related technologies. OPNET has recently added Web Services Description Language (WSDL) import to ACE Whiteboard to automatically construct a virtual Web 2.0 transaction. This new capability has been deployed and tested with a key user organization, and is planned to be available soon.