SMARTS(R) Unveils InCharge(TM) Multicast Manager

SMARTS(R) Unveils InCharge(TM) Multicast Manager

First Management Solution of its Kind to Correlate Multicast Protocol Performance with Problems in the Underlying IP Infrastructure

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., DEC. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- SMARTS(R), the leading provider of real-time business management solutions, today unveiled InCharge(TM) Multicast Manager -- the industry's first solution to proactively monitor the health of IP multicast services, pinpoint the root cause of problems that impact these services, and correlate them with alarms and events in the underlying IP network.

"In recent years, multicast has become the accepted protocol for broad- based data distribution -- acting as the foundation for such business applications as e-learning, streaming media, and financial data distribution. As the importance of these applications continues to increase, companies need to ensure these services can be managed in alignment with the rest of their business-critical IT infrastructure," said Elisabeth Rainge, Director of Network Management, IDC.

InCharge Multicast Manager offers enterprise and service provider customers the unprecedented ability to discover, visualize, and monitor IP multicast services. Additionally, the solution is a unique tool for discovering and visualizing the multicast entities and behaviors in a network. Users can view membership of multicast groups, layout of multicast trees, active sessions and protocol entities, and understand how these relate to the underlying IP network.

Like all InCharge solutions, InCharge Multicast Manager leverages the InCharge Common Information Model(TM) (ICIM) to represent entities in the network domain, and Codebook Correlation Technology(TM) to pinpoint the root cause of alarms it receives. InCharge's unique cross-domain correlation capability enables InCharge to correlate multicast domain events with network connectivity failures, diagnosing the physical network failure as the root cause, and multicast failures as impacts of that root cause problem.

"Leveraging our next-generation analysis, automation and abstraction technologies, InCharge Multicast Manager is the only solution of its kind with the ability to correlate issues in the IP multicast infrastructure with problems in the underlying IP network," said SMARTS Senior Director of Product Marketing Dave Walters. "This functionality is critical as companies strive to speed mean time-to-repair and ensure the highest levels of availability of these next-generation, business-critical services."

InCharge Multicast Manager works in conjunction with InCharge IP Availability Manager and Service Assurance Manager to:

* Automatically populate the initial IP multicast topology.

* Discover and support devices running various multicast protocols
including PIM, IGMP, MSDP, ANYCAST, and Auto RP.

* Discover multicast entities including Designated Routers (DR),
Rendezvous Points (RP), Bootstrap Routers (BSR), Sources, IGMP Receiving
sub-networks, Multicast Groups and mapping agents.

* Visualize multicast trees overlaying the IP network.

* Monitor routers in the receiving IGMP sub-networks for DR changes.

* Collect and monitor traffic statistics and notify threshold crossings on
a per-group basis to monitor for silent sources or lack of traffic over
a multicast route.

* Notify threshold crossings on a per-group basis to monitor for over-
utilization in a segment of the multicast route.

* Perform impact analysis to diagnose the effect of L2/L3 and physical
failures on multicast entities.

* Perform non-intrusive monitoring, using SNMP MIBS, to avoid non-
scaleable telnet or inline snooping.

Availability


InCharge Multicast Manager is available now from SMARTS and its authorized partners.

About SMARTS

SMARTS(R) is the leading provider of real-time business management solutions. Thousands of customers worldwide use SMARTS(R) InCharge(TM) solutions to detect and resolve the IT management problems that affect business services. InCharge solutions leverage comprehensive discovery, a built-in information model, intelligent analytics, and advanced automation to conduct real-time root cause and impact analysis across networks, systems, applications, and the business services they support. By automating high-cost, labor-intensive tasks, SMARTS InCharge enables customers to improve quality of service, lower operating costs, increase revenue, and reduce business risk

SMARTS customers include the world's leading corporate enterprises, educational and government institutions, and service providers, including: Microsoft, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), CGI Group, Inc., SBC, Verizon, UPS, The TJX Companies, Inc., Interoute, Computer Science Corporation, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, DoubleClick, Inc., and SWIFT. For more information, visit the SMARTS Web site at http://www.smarts.com/.

SMARTS, InCharge, Authentic Problem, Codebook Correlation Technology, Instant Results Technology, Graphical Visualization, SMART Adapters, and Holistic IT Management are trademarks or registered trademarks of System Management ARTS Incorporated. The InCharge products mentioned in this document are covered by one or more of the following US Patent Nos. 5,528,516, 5,661,668, and 6,249,755 and pending US and foreign patent applications. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

US Press Contacts
Craig Librett
SMARTS
+1 (914) 798-8664
craig.librett@smarts.com

International Press Contacts
Suhela Dighe Joerg Luecke
SMARTS SMARTS EMEA Central
+44 (0) 1753-878115 + 49 (0) 1713-10-5474
suhela.dighe@smarts.comjoerg.luecke@smarts.com


Source: SMARTS

CONTACT: US: Craig Librett, +1-914-798-8664, craig.librett@smarts.com, or
International: Suhela Dighe, +44-1753-878115, suhela.dighe@smarts.com, or
Joerg Luecke, SMARTS EMEA Central, +49-1713-10-5474, joerg.luecke@smarts.com,
all for SMARTS

Web site: http://www.smarts.com/


-------
Profile: intent