LOAD-BALANCING SOLUTIONS
Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner is our readers' choice for Best Load-Balancing Solutions. LoadRunner, recognized as industry-standard load-testing software, is used to predict system behavior and performance under real-life user loads.
LoadRunner exercises the entire infrastructure by emulating the traffic of real users. Each of these users drives the application with real transactions while LoadRunner measures response times, network delays, and both server and application performance to help isolate performance bottlenecks and fine-tune performance within the application infrastructure.
LoadRunner provides customized, integrated, real-time monitors that capture and display performance data from within the various tiers of the system during the load test. These capabilities enable enterprise customers to minimize pre-deployment test cycles, optimize system performance, and reduce overall IT costs.
LoadRunner predicts system behavior and performance and employs performance monitors to identify and isolate problems. By using LoadRunner, organizations can minimize testing cycles, optimize performance and accelerate deployment.
| LOADRUNNER |
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Mercury Interactive Sunnyvale, CA (408) 822-5200 www.mercuryinteractive.com Price: Starts at $44,000 |
MANAGEMENT/MONITORING/ANALYSIS SOLUTIONS
In one of the more heavily contested categories, NetIQ's AppManager was a clear winner as Best Management, Monitoring, and Analysis Solution.
AppManager is a widely adopted solution for managing, analyzing, and reporting on the health, performance, and availability of your mission-critical Windows and Unix servers and applications, from the physical hardware to business-critical server applications. Providing the broadest and deepest management view into your infrastructure, AppManager delivers comprehensive performance management, checking for potential problems, triggering appropriate corrective actions and notification, and gathering detailed long-term data for planning, analysis, and reporting.
AppManager's Analysis Center component uses a SQL Server 2000-based data warehouse with OLAP capabilities and specialized reporting engines to put powerful and flexible service level, capacity planning, and ad hoc performance reporting at the fingertips of system managers.
| APPMANAGER |
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NetIQ Corp. San Jose, CA (408) 856-3000 www.netiq.com Price: Based on the number and type of managed systems and applications. Agents start at $600 and consoles start at $2,500. |
WEB-ACCESS CONTROL/MONITORING SOFTWARE
Websense Enterprise won the Readers' Choice Award for Best Web-Access Control and Monitoring Software; a close runner-up was Quest Software's Big Brother.
Websense Enterprise is an employee Internet management (EIM) solution used by more than 17,000 organizations worldwide. The software enables businesses to manage how their employees use the Internet, improving productivity, conserving network bandwidth and storage costs, and mitigating legal liability.
Websense is based on pass-through filtering technology, an accurate, reliable, and scalable method of Internet filtering, and works in conjunction with the Websense Master Database of more than 3.5 million Web sites.
The runner-up, Quest Software's Big Brother, is a Web-based system and network monitor that helps organizations maintain system and network availability by detecting problems and notifying system administrators immediately via pager, email alert, or text message.
| WEBSENSE ENTERPRISE |
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Websense Inc. San Diego, CA (800) 723-1166 www.websense.com Price: Approximately $15-$20 per user per year |
| RUNNER-UP Big Brother |
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Quest Software, Inc. Irvine, CA (949) 754-8000 www.BB4.com Price: Free |