Concord goes for one-stop shopping status for SLM

An event that provided further evidence that this is occurring is an OEM agreement that was struck between network reporting king Concord Communications and FirstSense software.

FirstSense is a vendor of network applications performance management products that utilize custom management agents to provide network performance management for products such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Financials, Sybase, PeopleSoft ERP and Clarify FrontOffice 98. The agents combine a strong working knowledge of application product internals with the gathering of system CPU, disk storage and memory utilization statistics combined with key data from local error and event logs to support a more in-depth level of problem alerting and reporting. Alert and report services are generally provided to a centralized management server.

The nature of this agreement is one in which Concord will license client agent technology from FirstSense with the eventual objective of deploying that technology as an extension of Network Health. An alternative implementation scenario is one in which both products could support complementary management services while being deployed by the same enterprise manager.

The addition of FirstSense technology to Concord's Network Health® reporting and analysis software makes Concord the only vendor to provide an integrated Service Level Management solution that provides IT managers with a total view of the network infrastructure and its ability to support enterprise applications and key network services.

The longer term benefit of this agreement for system and network managers is a product option that can provide the benefits they need while reducing the vendor complexity that is typically Associated with a more traditional a la carte management approach. I would look for actual products resulting from this partnership to be available beginning in the third or fourth calendar quarters of this year.