SAN MATEO (03/17/2000) - Compuware Corp. is expected to announce Monday the availability of EcoPredictor 3.0, a tool that allows e-businesses to predict the performance of applications before deployment.
The need for smooth offline simulation will warrant greater attention in the future, said Bill Gassman, senior research analyst at Gartner Group Inc.
"The old days of trial and error are over," Gassman said. "People have to do these simulations when you start changing applications and networks. These tools are good 'ballpark' rules. It gives you an idea of where you are and if you can handle the load."
Gassman said products such as EcoPredictor 3.0 are becoming more important because they provide administrators a close look into the network without putting any increased strain or additional traffic into the network during the simulation.
"EcoPredictor is an excellent tool where a discreet simulation is impractical or impossible," said EcoPredictor user Steve Clay, systems engineer at Delta Airlines. He said Delta Airlines uses the Compuware product to evaluate applications that are intended to be deployed in large numbers, such as VOIP (voice over IP).
EcoPredictor can overlay e-commerce, ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), e-mail, or other application transactions onto live background traffic, said Compuware officials.
EcoPredictor -- which came to Compuware via its CACI acquisition late last year -- signals an attempt by the company to steadily divert from its familiar point-solution application development market to the realm of network infrastructure management, said Bill Madaras, a spokesman for Compuware.
EcoPredictor 3.0 is available now and is priced at US$24,5000. The price includes the COMNET Baseliner interface to external management systems, which is designed to filter various network management components into EcoPredictor, to build a model of the network.
Compuware Corp., in Farmington Hills, Michigan, is at http://www.compuware.com/.