NetQoS Inc., a provider of network performance management software and services for Global 4000 enterprises, managed service providers and integrators, today announced the launch of the NetQoS Performance Center Version 3 in Europe. The NetQoS Performance Center product suite provides global visibility, via a single Web-based management console, into the key metrics necessary to quantify network performance: end-to-end performance monitoring, traffic analysis and device management.

Network performance issues in global organisations are rising due to the increasing complexity and volume of application data, coupled with IT trends including convergence, consolidation and the increasing number of remote users accessing the corporate network. By providing customisable, role-specific views into this data, the NetQoS Performance Center helps IT professionals, including engineering, operations, and management:

• Measure end user response times
• Provide consistent application service delivery
• Understand how infrastructure changes affect network and application performance
• Isolate performance problems to the application, server, or network
• Identify the applications and users consuming bandwidth, and when
• Avoid unnecessary WAN costs
• Manage the convergence of voice, video and data
• Identify virus or denial of service attacks

The NetQoS Performance Center's product modules include NetQoS SuperAgent for end-to-end performance monitoring, NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer(tm) for Cisco IOS NetFlow and IPFIX traffic reporting and analysis, and NetQoS NetVoyant for device and infrastructure performance management.

London-based ICI Group, one of the world's largest producers of specialty products and paints, deployed the NetQoS Performance Center's ReporterAnalyzer module to gain visibility into network traffic from 320 locations in 46 countries. With its data traffic increasing 100 percent year over year due to international expansion, ICI's network team is under a mandate to control network costs and ensure efficient application delivery.

"As we strive to contain costs and make more informed decisions about bandwidth procurement and troubleshooting, our MPLS service providers could not give us the visibility we needed into detailed application traffic patterns," said Hitesh Parmer, ICI Group's global network technology manager. "Using ReporterAnalyzer with NetQoS Performance Center management reports gives us centralised visibility into traffic patterns across our global locations. This data enables us to justify bandwidth upgrades, reduce network costs by identifying under-utilised sites, troubleshoot issues faster, and analyse the impact of new application rollouts to prioritise traffic appropriately."

"In addition, the NetQoS Performance Center gives the network teams at each of our business units the ability to manage their own sites with customised views into their own traffic and alerting," continued Parmer. "From a business perspective, it's a cleaner and faster approach and has made the everyday life of the network managers much easier."

NetQoS Performance Center Version 3 further simplifies the collection and analysis of network performance management data through:

• Inbound/outbound integration using Web services: Customers can now export any NetQoS Performance Center view to any third-party Web-based application with just a few mouse clicks. In addition, NetQoS now has a published platform to display any inbound third-party application or custom data source in the Performance Center.
  For instance, NetQoS has integrated Newtest Robot technology, from Paris-based Auditec (www.auditec-newtest.com) into the NetQoS Performance Center. This integration enables NetQoS customers to define and monitor specific business transactions and diagnose application-specific performance issues from the same Web-based management console they use to monitor global network performance. The software robots are deployed at key locations and generate synthetic transactions that are monitored to gauge the performance and availability of selected business processes. This active monitoring approach complements NetQoS SuperAgent, which passively measures real user TCP application response times across the WAN without the use of distributed software agents.
• Enhanced user interface (UI): Based on extensive user testing, the NetQoS Performance Center's UI has been designed for intuitive use by different IT functional groups to maximise staff efficiency and collaboration. The state-of-the-art UI also provides a foundation for adding functionality in future releases as product and partner technology integration increases. In addition, the new Web UI has been optimized for viewing and interpreting data-rich charts and reports, based on feedback from NetQoS customers who have standardised on the Performance Center as their central console for network performance management in network operations centres and call centres.
• Updated sign-on features simplify the administration and configuration process for NetQoS customers using multiple product modules with the NetQoS Performance Center.
• More customisable page views: Any page in the NetQoS Performance Center can now easily be made a user's home page, enabling staff members to readily view the data most relevant to them.

In addition, the NetQoS Performance Center's product modules include the following new capabilities:

• NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer:
  • 30 days of one-minute granularity data: ReporterAnalyzer's product architecture scales to handle the number of interfaces and volume of flow data in the world's largest networks. Now, customers have access to detailed information at one-minute granularity for 30 days to analyse and solve network and application performance issues even faster.
  • Enhanced type of service (ToS) capabilities: As more customers move to MPLS environments and roll out applications such as VoIP and video on their networks, requiring various quality of service (QoS) policies, the ability to understand the impact of change is vital. ReporterAnalyzer provides the means to monitor how new technologies are impacting the environment by giving customers visibility into what applications are coloured with specific ToS values and how different classes of traffic are distributed across their enterprise environment.
• NetQoS SuperAgent: Role-based permission sets - By providing different views into performance information, SuperAgent helps IT organisations share information more easily to solve problems faster and report service levels. With its enhanced role-based permission sets, SuperAgent enables customers to assign users to one or many roles and to give those roles permissions to view one or many groups (applications, servers, networks) and any or all of the reporting sections within the product.
• NetQoS NetVoyant: For organisations deploying VoIP, NetVoyant gauges the quality of voice calls, including latency, jitter, packet loss, and mean opinion score (MOS), via Cisco IP SLA.

NetQoS sells the NetQoS Performance Center in the United Kingdom and Ireland through its London-based sales office. In addition, the NetQoS product line is available throughout Europe via its established reseller network.

The NetQoS Performance Center is included at no additional cost with the purchase of one of NetQoS' product modules: NetQoS SuperAgent starting at ú21,725, NetQoS ReporterAnalyzer(tm) starting at ú13,750 or NetQoS NetVoyant starting at ú13,750.

NetQoS launched the new version of the NetQoS Performance Center today at Cisco Networkers in Cannes, France, being held Jan. 30-Feb. 2. For a demo, visit NetQoS at booth G-2.

For more information about the NetQoS Performance Center or any of its product modules, visit http://www.netqos.co.uk/solutions/NPC/

About NetQoS Inc.
NetQoS software and services help large organisations - including 8 of the Fortune 12 - improve the delivery of applications over wide area networks by enabling them to monitor application service levels, troubleshoot problems quickly, and plan for change. Representative NetQoS customers include Chevron, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Hilton Hotels, Siemens, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, NASA, and Barclays Global Investors. NetQoS is based in Austin, Texas, and has offices in London and Singapore.