San Jose, Calif. -- Sept. 7, 1999 -- Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced extensions to the CiscoWorks2000 product family through the new Service Level Management Suite. Cisco is broadening its partner-based ecosystem to include service management software vendors by enabling them to enhance their solutions through a new collaborative network management interface.
"Being able to offer service management capabilities that span the worlds of the private and public network is of strong interest to both service providers and enterprises alike," said John Morency, executive vice president of consulting services at Sage Research. "With increased VPN and extranet deployment, enterprise managers need even more to be able tomeasure end-to-end application performance. Application performance has significant dependence on the performance of network equipment, such as enterprise and service provider-based routers. The ability to isolate the source of performance problems, irrespective of whether those problems occur at the application or routing layers, will be a key success factor for the increased deployment of production quality public network services."
Cisco is leading the industry by delivering a service level management suite with open XML-based management interfaces that enable a partner ecosystem for delivering a comprehensive, multi-vendor, end-to-end service management environment. The elements of this solution are:
- Cisco IOS(TM) Technologies: The Service Assurance Agent (SA Agent) is the fundamental technology enabling network centric measurements of service level metrics. This extends the Response Time Reporting (RTR) capabilities, which began shipping in Cisco IOS 11.2 with additional services to measure Web, voice, and data services.
- Open Standards Interfaces: The CiscoWorks2000 Service Level Management Suite utilizes the SA Agent to monitor network service level agreements. It provides business oriented reporting for IT managers on New World services deployed from service providers. This is the first service management application to offer open XML-based interfaces enabling an ecosystem of partners to extend their applications with Cisco service level management data using the power of the Internet delivery model.
- Cisco Management Connection Service Management Program: This program enriches the previously delivered Management Intranet model. It enables enterprise customers to choose the most effective applications and to construct a flexible and diverse service management solution consisting of multiple horizontally integrated partners. Vendors in the program have committed to deploying solutions based on Cisco's service management technology and open XML-based interfaces enabling enterprise customers a first-time ability to demarcate a problem when managing service level agreements from an end-to-end perspective -- whether on the server, client or network infrastructure.
At Networld + Interop in Atlanta, Georgia the week of September 13, 1999, Cisco and Inverse will demonstrate an integrated service management solution allowing an end-to-end service environment providing network demarcation for service level management. Demonstrations showing the Inverse VPN client technology distributed with the Cisco VPN client that allow monitoring of service quality over VPN networking and extending VPN metrics will be available in the Inverse booth at the same tradeshow.
"This New World service management solution empowers our enterprise customers to manage their vendor relationships for advanced services like VPNs," said John McCormack, senior marketing manger for the Enterprise Management Business Unit. "We have seen an explosion in the demand for deploying and managing these services over the last year. The broad scope of software vendors integrating their solution with ours is making the Management Intranet a reality."
The initial vendors in the program include: Compuware, Concord Communications, Desktalk Systems, FirstSense Software, Ganymede Software, Hewlett-Packard, InfoVista Corporation, Inverse Network Technology, Manage.Com, NetScout Systems, Network Associates, NextPoint Networks, ProactiveNET, Response Networks, TAVVE Software, Valencia Systems, Visionael and Visual Networks.
Availability and Pricing
The CiscoWorks2000 Service Management Solution will be available in the first quarter of the year 2000. Pricing for this solution will be approximately $15,000USD.Cisco Systems
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