Transaction performance management vendor Precise Software has revealed that is in the process of developing tools to monitor cloud and virtualised environments. The products are expected to be released in 2010.
Precise Software began life in the late 1980s as an application performance management (APM) vendor. The firm was acquired by Veritas in June 2003 as the storage management company looked to expand into other performance management fields. Veritas was acquired by Symantec in 2004 but the company decided that Precise’s technology was not needed and it was spun out in 2008.
Since then the company has focused on transaction process management (TPM). In an interview with CBR earlier this year, CEO Mark Kremer said: “In the ‘90s everyone was doing ERP and today, managing the performance of the individual systems is much better understood, so the focus has moved. It’s moved from machine performance to transaction performance. Transactions are where companies live and breathe, and also where they can die if they get it wrong.”
The company’s customer base has grown steadily and it now counts 60% of the Fortune 100 on its list.
But the increasing adoption of virtualisation and cloud technologies within its customer base has presented Precise with a new set of challenges. “Virtualisation is adding another dimension to TPM because of the constantly changing environment,” Precise’s VP of marketing Ed Colonna told CBR. “There are undeniable cost savings from virtualisation but we’re not yet seeing mission-critical business apps moving there. I think companies are worried about not being able to manage the environment.”
To combat these issues, Colonna added that the company is looking to launch a product that can manage transaction performance in virtualised environments. “2010 will be the inflection point for virtualisation, it’s when we’ll have a full-blown virtualisation platform,” he said.
The release is expected to be coupled with a cloud visibility platform. “Cloud presents some similar challenges to virtualisation,” Colonna said. “It extends a data centre beyond four walls and relinquishes a lot of control – I think that is an issue for a lot of people.”
