WhatsUp Gold Gets Makeover

The network management division of Ipswitch is unveiling the new and improved WhatsUp Gold suite of network, server and application monitoring software. While more than 100,000 small and midsize business networks worldwide already use WUG solutions, version 15 is drawing rave reviews from early adopters, says Pat Loring, VP of sales, North America.

“We surveyed our beta program users with various versions of WhatsUp Gold, and 100 percent ranked it as 8 or higher (out of 10), and 40 percent ranked it as 10 or higher. Some wanted to give it an 11 out of 10.”

While there is always room for improvement, Ipswitch has gotten a lot of things right with this release, says Jim Frey, managing research director, Enterprise Management Associates. “They have completely reworked their user interface to bring it more in line with current best practices in the management tools sector. They have also filled in a long list of gaps and gotchas that previous versions had for handling large scale environments. They have taken some positive steps toward integrating the various components in their product portfolio, such as WhatsUp Flow Monitor, WhatsVirtual and WhatsConnected, all of which provide complementary features to the core WUG platform.”

Frey says Ipswitch still needs to do a better job of completing these integrations, both from a data exchange and workflow perspective, and they are also still playing catch-up regarding the sophistication of their support for virtual systems environments, though the latest release is a good step forward. Overall, he believes it brings the company into a better position versus its traditional competitors, and puts it right at the front of the pack in terms of ease of use. “The improvements they have made in handling large, managed environments also means that WUG becomes a more viable option versus traditional high-end network management platforms, in particular at the high end of the midsize enterprise and low end of large enterprise markets.”Integration and a single-pane-of-glass approach is a major requirement in this market, says Frey. “One of the greatest drivers now is the need to bring tools together more effectively, so a single, consolidated platform can manage across all of the components within an IT infrastructure [for example, physical servers, virtual servers, network, applications and storage]. Another trend is the need for closer integration and better features for managing infrastructure security and reporting on compliance. All of these are counterbalanced by the ongoing need to do this in a cost-effective way--both in terms of up-front product licensing, as well as ongoing administrative/support costs.”

Under development for two years, WUG 15 incorporates a number of enhancements requested by users, including integrated Layer 2 discovery and maps, an easier-to-use and faster Web interface, an integrated view of network performance and security of key enterprise assets, and Active Directory integration.

Flow Monitor can now automatically discover and detect routers and other network devices, and can even configure them with the Flow Configuration Wizard. With Flow Aggregation Capabilities, users can now group and manage multiple flow sources across different devices and treat them as a single aggregated source. In addition, new auto-tuning and optimization capabilities, over 3 million flows per minute, automatically optimize flow retention settings for a network to increase performance and decrease database storage costs.

Ipswitch has also boosted the performance of its virtual discovery engine. Dynamic LiveMaps are automatically updated now to reflect up-to-date virtual to physical associations at all times, so users can track live migrations in real-time. In addition, Ipswitch says, WhatsVirtual now features FIPS 140-2 validation and encryption, the highest and strongest level of cryptography available in the commercial software market.

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