Application Performance Management - Forrester Issues Evaluation on What Nastel Offers

Forrester, an independent research agency, released a sixteen page report in December 2010 that reviews Nastel Technologies' application performance management / business transaction management  software  solution AutoPilot. The evaluation focuses on four primary criteria: 1) Market factors; 2) Adoption factors; 3) Implementation factors; and 4) Company factors..

In the report, Evaluating Innovative I&O Solutions: Converged Application Performance Management, Forrester recognizes that Nastel already offers one of the "best tools so far to build closed-loop automation for application management." Forrester took special interest in the way that Nastel has adapted complex event processing (CEP) to application performance management (APM). The report pointed to the fact that CEP is an important step forward in controlling and automating APM.

The report was issued to assist infrastructure and operations (I&O) executives in evaluating whether investing in AutoPilot as an APM solution would be a positive investment for the business their IT department supports. Highlights of the Forrester assessment follow.

Application Performance Management - Market Factors

Forrester found that Nastel AutoPilot stands out in its ability to provide integration between installed monitoring solutions. Because most I&O teams have already installed at least one complete infrastructure monitoring solutions, AutoPilot's ability to integrate events and data from these sources with events and data collected by AutoPilot is an attractive feature.

Forrester found AutoPilot addressed another market factor effectively. The complex event engine's ability to provide root-cause analysis has eliminated the need to use code books, rule engines, and other forms of historical event analysis. The CEP design used by AutoPilot offers dynamic analysis of multiple sources and the potential to infer causality from the analysis it performs on dynamic events. Forrester sees this design as the cutting edge for forming closed-loop automation for resolving the most common performance issues.

Forester reports that AutoPilot is unique in that it brings integration and complex event processing together in a single product. This provides I&O executives with a decisive tool for dealing with business-critical, complex, transactional applications.

Application Performance Management - Adoption Factors

Forrester finds that AutoPilot offers two advantages. It's ability to integrate with existing solutions that have already been implemented by large I&O departments fits Forrester's "vested interest" criteria. It serves as a building block for mainframe transaction monitoring for major market segments--banking, financial services, insurance, retail business. AutoPilot is also equipped to meet the needs of mid-sized businesses who find that the complexities of IT are impacting their quality of service.

AutoPilot also gives companies who install the program technical and economic advantages. Once again the complex event processing (CEP) engine reduces operational expenditures through 1) a reduction in outages and ability to shorten outages which occur; 2) an improvement staff efficiency with a resulting reduction in labor costs; 3) a reduction in capital expenditures; and 4) an improvement in compliance to SLAs. AutoPilot's CEP analysis enables proactive resolution of issues and quick identification of causal factors when problems emerge. Adopting AutoPilot will have a positive influence on the bottom line.

Application Performance Management - Implementation Factors

Forrester takes the ease with which a technology solution can be adopted seriously. Also, the length of time before I&O begins to see a benefit from adopting an Application Performance Management  solution is evaluated. AutoPilot passes this test as well. Forrester finds that AutoPilot's ability to significantly reduce operational resources after deployment is a major benefit.

And enterprises can expect to see ongoing operational benefits according to the report. For example, AutoPilot reduces brownouts which improves business productivity. And it reduces the need to take all the I&O personnel from their regular duties to resolve mission critical, customer impacting cascading failures.

Application Performance Management - Company Factors

Forrester states that the company's 15+ year history has demonstrated that it is both viable and able to serve any size I&O shop. Forrester sees the primary limitation faced by the company is the fact that it still needs more name recognition. The product is a solid one. Forrester encourages the company to pursue more partnerships and to build an image at the level of the solution.