SUNNYVALE, CALIF. -  Mercury Interactive last week introduced software the company says gives network executives an easy way to view application performance data and relate it in real time to business services and end users.

Mercury launched the Optane suite and the first product in the suite, Topaz Business Availability software. The company says the software gives companies a way to track how well IT delivers services such as e-mail, CRM and enterprise resource planning applications. The software uses a Web interface to show network managers application performance and to correlate it with predefined service levels.

Topaz Business Availability software collects performance information across network elements, such as operating systems and servers, and compares that data with preset service levels and rules. The software also can show which business services and end users that a poorly performing application will affect. Mercury says the software will let network managers spot - and fix - performance degradations before end users or customers are affected.

Zeus Kerravala, vice president of enterprise infrastructure at The Yankee Group, says Mercury released its new software at a time when customers want to better relate their IT infrastructure to overall business performance. The new suite of IT service management software puts Mercury - best known for testing, tuning and Web site performance monitoring software - in competition with Smarts and Managed Objects, which sell software that relates and tracks technology metrics against service levels.

Kerravala says Managed Objects, which introduced this type of software in 1997, might have been ahead of user demand. "[With this new software], Mercury is aligning IT and business objectives. Users seem to understand the need to make IT a strategic part of how they do business now," Kerravala says.

Several network management vendors, including IBM Tivoli, Hewlett-Packard and Micromuse, also sell software that shows customers how well applications perform and how they affect the business' bottom line.

Kerravala says corporate network executives need to find ways to cut costs and improve user productivity, and many management vendors are responding this year. But, he adds, "You can't just buy technology and hope it does some good. All of these products need to be implemented correctly."