Symantec Delivers Faster Resolution of Enterprise Application Performance Bottlenecks with i3 8.0

Comprehensive performance management platform offers new Software Development Kit (SDK) to provide expanded view of application performance visibility and better integration with critical applications

CUPERTINO, Calif.– Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the latest release of Symantec i³, the award-winning core offering of Symantec’s end-to-end Application Performance Management (APM) portfolio that proactively monitors, analyzes and diagnoses performance and availability bottlenecks which impact business critical applications. Enhancements to Symantec i³ enable faster resolution of application performance problems, expanded ease of administration and better integration with legacy applications.

As part of the latest release, Symantec is offering a powerful new Software Development Kit (SDK) that enables customers and partners to build value-added solutions for either legacy, custom or packaged applications, providing a common view into application performance. In addition, updates to Symantec’s robust knowledgebase and advice library include the addition of vendor specific intelligence and enhanced administration capabilities to help enterprise IT professionals take control of application performance.

“Symantec i³ helps us ensure the availability and performance of our critical applications, allowing IT to better support our business and customers,” said Luis Morales of Financial Security Assurance Inc (FSA), which provides financial guaranty insurance for asset-backed securities, municipal bonds and other structured obligations in the global markets. ”With i³ 8.0, we will be proactively notified of potential issues, enabling faster resolution of application performance problems and allowing us to put our IT resources toward other business-critical activities.”

Faster Resolution of Application Slowdowns

Symantec i³ 8.0 introduces a number of enhancements that speed up the identification and resolution of application performance issues to enable IT professionals to correct issues before end users experience problems. Updates to i³ that accelerate resolution of performance bottlenecks include:

* Improvements to Symantec’s SmartLink technology which enables the rapid identification of performance problems by correlating transaction data across numerous technology tiers. This allows customers to quickly identify where performance problems exist within complex multi-tier applications.
* Support for the capabilities of SmartLink and SmarTune have been extended to Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft .NET, which today are used as the base for many mission critical business applications.
* Symantec i³ now provides database administrators a summary of the top performance problems in one screen and specific advice on how to resolve them. In addition, i³ also now reports and sends alerts on Sybase database performance when its results are not within the user-specified guidelines.
* A significantly expanded J2EE knowledgebase in the SmarTune library for J2EE includes out-of-the-box vendor specific intelligence and advice for applying performance management best practices in critical business application platforms such as WebLogic, WebSphere and Oracle. SmarTune is the core technology within i³ which provides an extensive support library and offers expert advice on how to fix performance problems. SmartTune provides “What-If Analysis” by simulating performance enhancements prior to actually making changes on production environments.

J2EE SmarTune data gives application owners a top level view, complete with recommendations. Suggestions are now provided all the way to the application summary level, allowing customers to analyze an entire application instead of individual components.

“Organizations choose multi-tier applications for their modularity, extensibility and scalability, but many performance management solutions don’t extend the same level of flexibility to build customized views to detect, diagnose, and correct performance, for custom or legacy applications,” said Brian Babineau, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “ Symantec i³ 8.0 provides customers with a standard tool across all applications to quickly identify the source of application problems and recommendations on how to best address these issues reducing the risk that the problems will reoccur or significantly disrupt accessibility.”

Enhanced Support for Monitoring and Applications

A powerful new Software Development Kit (SDK) enables customers, channel partners and systems integrators to customize i³ to monitor, detect, diagnose and correct performance of critical applications. Applying i³’s robust capabilities to custom or packaged applications also provides organizations with a more expansive view of application performance across their data center.

The Application Service Dashboard offered as part of i³ provides a consolidated and personalized view of relevant business metrics from monitored systems. New portlets will also be made available with Application Service Dashboard 2.0 to enable monitoring of Microsoft environments, including SQL Server and .NET, J2EE virtual machines, Oracle and SAP.

Expanded Ease of Deployment and Administration

Symantec i³ 8.0 also includes new capabilities for administrators to deploy and manage Symantec i³ without having to physically install the software on each machine. Using a command line interface (CLI), administrators can perform system-wide administrative tasks. In addition, i³ adds role-based administration capabilities, enabling administrators to pre-define permission and access rights to view performance data for monitored applications and databases. Roles can be assigned to groups, people or individuals within each user’s security settings.

“Maintaining optimal performance of applications before issues impact end-users and business operations is vital to sustaining critical business operations and a major issue plaguing IT professionals,” said Henri Isenberg, vice president, Application Performance Management, Symantec. “Symantec i³ 8.0 provides our customers with powerful performance monitoring and comprehensive capabilities for quick problem resolution that can help them identify, fix and manage application performance before it impacts end users and the bottom line.”

Pricing and Availability

Symantec i³ 8.0 is now generally available through Symantec’s certified value-added resellers system integrators and direct sales force. Suggested pricing begins at $1500 per physical CPU. For more information, visit Symantec at www.symantec.com.