SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 9, 1995 -- Cisco Systems, Inc., and NETSYSTechnologies, Inc., have signed a worldwide licensing agreement calling forCisco to resell the entire NETSYS Enterprise/Solver family ofsimulation-based network planning and problem-solving products.
In addition to reselling the NETSYS products to its internetworkingcustomers, Cisco will deploy them internally in its consulting engineering,training and customer support organizations.
The initial NETSYS product group to be sold by Cisco, beginning insecond quarter 1995, is the Connectivity Toolkit, a set of four UNIX-basedapplications that assist network planners in designing and planning effortsrelated to network connectivity, route and flow problems. Also included inthe Toolkit is an interface to the CiscoWorks3.0 network managementapplication suite, which automatically transports the configurationsvalidated by the NETSYS tools into CiscoWorks, where they can be managed bythe user.
Tools That 'Learn' From the Customer's Network
Carole Crall, Cisco's director of network management, called NETSYS'sproducts "the most sophisticated network planning tools on the market.While other tools require the customer to build a theoretical model thatapproximates a network's configuration, NETSYS's products can 'learn' fromthe user's actual network, automatically assimilating information fromvarious devices and from Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS). Thisapproach is gaining widespread acceptance among such leading companies asMCI and Amdahl."John Bedrick, director of marketing for NETSYS, said, "Our productsallow customers to actively participate in a virtual model of their currentenvironment without impacting the production network. Within this virtualenvironment they can make changes, creating a variety of 'what-if'scenarios -- again, without wreaking havoc on the existing network.
"We believe the agreement with Cisco is a tremendous validation ofNETSYS's approach to network planning and problem solving. We willcontinue to work with Cisco on developing these models as well as movinginto more sophisticated environments such as ATM in the future."
Initial Product Offering
The NETSYS Connectivity Toolkit creates a simulation environment thatnetwork planners can use to study the impact of such factors as faileddevices and links and various configuration changes before implementingthem in their networks. Individual components of the Toolkit are:- Connectivity Baseliner, which constructs a network topology map depicting real-world connectivity learned from device configuration files. This map lets the user visualize all aspects of network connectivity, including detailed attributes of each device and its associated interfaces.
- Connectivity Solver, which simulates "what-if" scenarios on the baseline map. Users can assess the potential impact of such problems as failed links or nodes, protocol mismatches or encapsulation errors, before they actually occur.
- Network Drawing Tool, which lets users build network topology representations from scratch or using predefined templates.
In addition to the Toolkit, Cisco will offer NETSYS's Batch ProcessingTools, which provide a scripting language for setting up specificevaluation scenarios.
Pricing/Availability
The Connectivity Toolkit will be available in second quarter 1995 forSun SparcStations running the Sun OS or Solaris 2.3 operating systems.Toolkit components are priced as follows:Connectivity Baseliner $ 7,500 Connectivity Solver $39,995 Network Drawing Tool $15,000 Batch Processing Tools $10,000NETSYS Technologies, Inc., formed in April 1991, develops and marketssoftware tools for automated, real-time network problem solving andplanning for LAN/WAN internetworking environments. The company'sEnterprise/Solver product family incorporates such advanced technologies asknowledge-based systems, artificial intelligence, network optimization,real-time simulation and client-server management. The company is based inPalo Alto, Calif.
Posted: Jan 9 09:39:13 1995
