Coradiant partners to manage databases

Management service provider Coradiant this week announced a deal with fellow service provider dbaDirect, which the company says will add remote database management to its suite of services.

Coradiant provides customers with remote network analysis and services for Web infrastructures. Its Remote DBA Service will take dbaDirect's remote database administration expertise and couple it with Coradiant's infrastructure management services. Users get 24-7 database support as well as network monitoring and performance trend reports. Other database features provided with the service include database maintenance, performance tuning, and backup and recovery.

"There are so many managed service providers with expertise in one area," says Alistair Croll, Coradiant chief strategy officer. "We're taking that database expertise from dbaDirect and offering customers one unified service."

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Coradiant works with several hosting companies to collocate its software box that includes firewalls, load balancers and network management software, among other tools. Customers can choose to collocate their servers at the same data center as the Coradiant tools.

In order for Coradiant to collect, monitor and analyze customer data, the customer must establish cross connects from their servers to the Coradiant box. Customers' Internet traffic hits their own servers, which are also connected to the Coradiant toolset on site.

Coradiant customers can also choose a stand-alone version of the service. In this scenario, Coradiant locates a probe appliance outside the customer network where it collects data, such a network latency, response time and throughput. The company also places passive devices to watch traffic patterns traveling in and out of the network. Agents on outside points across the Internet are set up to simulate user transactions.

The probe appliance takes all the data collected by it, the sniffer devices and the agents on the 'Net and aggregates in into one database where analysis is performed. Coradiant staff and customers can then log into a Web-based portal, called OutSight, to determine the cause of problems and find resolutions.

The analysis database also sends out a type of trouble ticket that Croll refers to as an "investigation ticket." Rather than a reactive alert when a problem occurs, the tickets Coradiant generates let users know of performance degradation and tells them the area may need attention, he says.

With about 50 customers using various services, Coradiant's products compete with Mecury Interactive offerings that include Topaz, ActiveWatch and SiteScope.

Coradiant customers typically pay between $30,000 to $50,000 for a three-month consultation and services range from $7,500 to $30,000 per month, depending on the scope of service and the customer's network requirements.