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NEWS & EVENTS

Mazu Networks Identifies the Top Five IT Initiatives for CIOs in 2008 to Improve the Availability and Performance of Business Services

Application Performance Management; Security and Compliance; WAN Management; CMDB Discovery; and Data Center Consolidation and Migration Revealed as the Most Pressing IT Challenges for Companies Worldwide

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - April 7, 2008 - Mazu Networks, the leading(1) provider of behavior-based, enterprise-class availability and performance solutions, today announced that the company has identified the five most pressing IT initiatives for CIOs in 2008 that will enable them to improve the availability and performance of business services. Extensive customer interviews conducted by Mazu Networks during 2007 reveal that CIOs are most challenged by finding solutions to address five key initiatives, which include: application performance management; security and compliance; WAN management; CMDB discovery; and data center consolidation and migration.

"During the last year, we have received overwhelming feedback from our customers on the benefits they have realized through Mazu Profiler for their security, network and data center operations functions," said Paul Brady, CEO, Mazu Networks. "As a result of these extensive and intensive customer meetings, we identified the major initiatives they are tasked with in 2008 and learned how Mazu Profiler enables them to work toward resolving their key challenges. Through strategic partnerships, customer wins and major technology enhancements, Mazu Networks will continue to provide evidence of how Mazu Profiler can address the most pressing IT operations concerns for enterprises worldwide."

Mazu Profiler offers organizations a new way of looking at the IT infrastructure. By analyzing network traffic to provide valuable information about the interactions of and dependencies between users, applications and systems, Mazu Profiler enables IT organizations to manage, secure and optimize the availability and performance of business services. Providing organizations with this new perspective enables CIOs to address key IT initiatives in the following ways:

Application Performance Management

The range of tools available to help IT groups ensure service delivery has not kept pace with infrastructure complexities introduced by optimization technologies and Web-based n-tier applications. Mazu Profiler's advanced network behavior analytics help today's IT organizations by providing:

Proactive service assurance

  • Layer 7 visibility to distinguish actual business applications beyond the protocol/port level
  • Defining service-level objectives and monitoring for exceptions
  • Defining usage policies and monitoring for violations

Faster problem resolution

  • Understanding dependencies between users, applications, networks and systems
  • Automating workflow with contextual information

Effective WAN management

  • Identifying bandwidth utilization by application
  • Identifying trends for improved capacity managemen

Security and Compliance

Information and IT resources are the building blocks on which business services depend; securing these assets is paramount. A security breach can slow performance and prevent users from accessing information or resources on the network and can result in a number of damaging consequences including loss of revenue, negative impact to brand and inability to achieve regulatory compliance, among others. Although many products address critical security issues, they often make the business needs of an organization a second priority. Mazu Profiler enables organizations to give their networks lockdown-quality security without sacrificing performance and availability of business services by:

  • Detecting the broadest range of security threats and vulnerabilities across the entire network
  • Improving threat alerting and corrective actions
  • Automating compliance-readiness planning
  • Automating regulatory and usage policy enforcement
  • Reducing the effort and cost required to support audits
  • Providing cross-functional capabilities and reporting

WAN Management

Many IT organizations are turning to WAN management and acceleration technologies as a way to deliver better performance for business services without increasing bandwidth. However, these technologies are expensive, require a significant amount of management to ensure that their WAN investments are fulfilled and may cause IT teams to lose visibility into what is going on in their networks. Mazu Profiler gives organizations the following capabilities needed to improve WAN management:

  • Identify and prioritize optimization candidates
  • Quantify the benefits of optimization
  • Maintain WAN service levels

CMDB Discovery

Within today’s complex IT infrastructure it is critical for companies to maintain an up-to-date database of all IT resources that contribute to business services and that includes current information on how they are interconnected and configured. Changes based on an accurate CMDB are less likely to adversely affect availability and performance. There are many CMDB products on the market that help IT groups maintain and manage IT processes. However, many of these products use active scanning which can cause performance issues or prevent access to certain parts of the network because they lack the appropriate credentials.

Mazu Profiler does not require agents or scanning to discover assets and their dependencies on the network thereby allowing IT teams to accurately populate their configuration databases without affecting performance. Through partnerships with leading CMDB providers, Mazu Networks offers the following complementary discovery capabilities:

  • Passive application discovery and dependency mapping
  • Collect flow data from existing network equipment as a primary source
  • Layer 7 application fingerprinting
  • Behavioral analytics to detect significant change

Data Center Consolidation and Migration

Data center consolidation and migration is a major undertaking that consumes significant time and resources and is fraught with risk. Planning is long and arduous, often reliant on manual processes and therefore error-prone. Current tools do not go far enough to address the risks associated with data center moves, but through Mazu Profiler IT teams can:

  • Understand actual dependencies (i.e., what applications are running on what servers?)
  • Understand actual usage (i.e., when is the optimal time to make the data center move?)
  • Understand the impact of change (i.e., who will be affected? When will they be affected? What is my change window?)
  • Proactively identify post-implementation problems (i.e., why are users in a certain location having connection problems now that the data center is moved and back online?)

Maintaining high network availability and performance is critical to running a productive business. With Mazu Profiler, companies can address critical IT initiatives and evolve their networked infrastructures to keep pace with the speed of business today. For more information on the ways Mazu Profiler can resolve today’s most pressing IT operations challenges, please visit: http://www.mazunetworks.com/it-initiatives/index.php.

About Mazu Networks, Inc.

Mazu Networks offers solutions that enable IT organizations to manage, secure, and optimize the availability and performance of business services. Mazu Profiler uses Network Behavior Analysis (NBA) to provide a new way of looking at the IT infrastructure by analyzing network traffic to provide valuable information about the interactions of and dependencies between users, applications, and systems. This enables enterprise IT organizations to ensure optimal performance and availability, enhanced protection and support for regulatory compliance, and informed decision making for IT initiatives. Only Mazu Profiler offers behavioral analytics, user identification and application fingerprinting, role-based presentation using common data, and intelligent operation with other systems in the infrastructure. With Mazu Profiler, hundreds of customers are able to ensure the availability, performance, and security of business services as well as to reduce costs and satisfy regulatory requirements. For more information, please visit www.mazunetworks.com.

 

(1) See: http://www.mazunetworks.com/news-events/061201-yankee.php.