BACKGROUND: Maryville Technologies is a leading independent IT professional services firm. Maryville delivers integrated solutions in support of IT service provisioning and IT service management that facilitate IT operational excellence. Our technical prowess, process expertise, project management discipline and history of facilitating IT organizational change help businesses optimize IT service levels at the lowest operational cost.
PLATFORM: Windows, IIS, C, Java, SQL Server, Apache Tomcat, Sun Proxy Server.
PROBLEM SOLVED: We aimed to improve IT service level and problem resolution in complex application environments that include desktop and Web clients, Internet, Web services, proxies, load balancers, application servers and databases.
PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY: SharePath from Correlsense for the first time gives us in real time a complete view of what is going on with our business transactions across the entire topology of our data center. In the past, we only had visibility into individual silos (application servers, databases, etc.) and for sample transactions. Now we see the full picture for all our transactions - no matter how complex the application is. SharePath enables the IT business processes that are critical for us to manage business services and ensure IT reliability, from service level management, to incident management, change management, configuration management and capacity management.
STRENGTHS: SharePath stands out in four key areas: ease of deployment, coverage, nonintrusiveness and data visualization. I was able to download the application and be up and running in days, which was a nice surprise compared to other technologies I have evaluated. The way SharePath collects transaction data close to the operating system level provides a wide range of platform support and eliminates the need for bytecode instrumentation or other invasive approaches – again shortening the implementation time. This approach also reduces the impact of gathering transaction data to insignificant levels, making it possible to collect data for all transactions in real time. Most important for us is the SharePath display of transaction data in views that are highly consumable and directly point to where problems are, reducing the cost and time to diagnose and fix them.
WEAKNESS: It would be nice to blend in packet data from a network infrastructure perspective and combine it with the rich transaction metrics provided by SharePath.
SELECTION CRITERIA: With SharePath, instead of being presented with tables of data that require the user to know what they are looking for, we have visualizations that immediately and intuitively point to where we need to focus our attention. Now, level-one support people can identify the root cause of problems that previously required level-three resources.
DELIVERABLES: Operations staffs enjoy a wide range of intelligent transaction visualizations that display data both in real time or in “playback” mode for any window of time in order to diagnose what happened. These views include: a transaction watch which is a dynamic bulls-eye chart where transactions are floating bubbles going from green to amber to red, depending on their SLA compliance; a topology map that displays a graphic tree of the data center components and of the transactions flowing through them; and various transaction breakdowns by tiers, transaction type, user and other criteria in order to pinpoint the location and root cause of a problem.
VENDOR SUPPORT: Correlsense has proven to be a very nimble and transparent organization. We understand what they are working on, and when we have suggestions we do not have to go through layers of bureaucracy – we even have direct access to developers.
DOCUMENTATION: The SharePath Quick Start was spot-on – I downloaded the application and the guide and was productive very quickly. I never had the need to get into the detailed documentation because of the usability of the product user interface and the guidance in the Quick Start.
Correlsense SharePath
Correlsense Inc.
Correlsense SharePath Business Transaction Management
100 Park Avenue, Suite 1600
New York, NY 10017
212-202-3214
www.correlsense.com
Product reviews are customer testimonials. We thank the author of this review for taking the time to share his or her expertise.
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