Avesta_s eWatcher Keeps Eye On Web Apps.

Avesta Technologies, a supplier of network mapping, monitoring and troubleshooting software, has added an eWatcher application to its product line for monitoring Web site applications. The 3-year-old New York City company counts many former information technology managers from the financial services industry among its 125 employees. Many of its first 100 customers are found in the insurance industry, said Helen Donnelly Toth, vice president of marketing. Ewatcher_s task is to monitor a Web application from the perspective not of the network manager, but of the end user. It test-drives the application by simulating multiple users generating transactions, Toth said. It watches live response times and sends alerts as they start exceeding a preset level of acceptability, she added. EWatcher can work alone or in conjunction with Avesta_s older Trinity 1.3 product, which maps resources on a network. The goal is not to provide another layer of network management, but to spot problems as they occur from the perspective of the end user_s experience. A failed switch could affect server performance and slow down an application. By detecting the slowdown through eWatcher, a manager could inspect network resources through Trinity "to pinpoint the root cause," Toth explained. Trinity builds a dynamic model of the network, mapping resources as they are added. Such a system is needed as networks change or undergo software upgrades. Trinity modules integrate with systems management software such as Computer Associates International_s Unicenter TNG and BMC_s. EWatcher was previously called IpnetWatcher. It is priced at $1,500 to $15,000, depending on installation.