January 17, 2008

As you may have read in our recent press announcement, Heroix has released two new Longitude versions. Some have asked what this means for the “old” Heroix Longitude, so I thought I’d offer a little background on each package. The software we know as Heroix Longitude is still alive and well, and is now called Longitude Enterprise Edition, reflecting its full coverage of application performance and network monitoring, with advanced features that facilitate IT monitoring and management in large enterprises. The two new versions – Longitude Standard Edition and Longitude Professional Edition – consist of selected features packaged and priced to meet the needs of smaller and mid-sized businesses.

Longitude Standard Edition provides out-of-the-box operating system and IT infrastructure monitoring that’s affordable for small to medium businesses; it covers Windows (including Server, XP, and Vista), RedHat and SuSE Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, VMware ESX, Cisco devices, and transactions. It features a web-based user interface, an event monitor for real time monitoring, proactive notification and corrective action, Windows Event Log consolidation, tailorable rules and thresholds, a real time statistics dashboard, and interactive reporting with built-in performance and event reports.

Longitude Professional Edition provides everything found in Standard Edition, plus application performance monitoring and event handling often needed by midsized to larger businesses. It monitors IIS, Apache, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Exchange, DHCP, Active Directory, Dell OpenManage, HP Systems Insight Manager, and IBM Director. Professional Edition also monitors additional transaction types and can import MIBs to monitor any SNMP-based network device. It includes application-specific event monitor views, and can schedule alerts and actions, escalate events, and export performance data. Active Directory can optionally be used for authentication on Windows.

Longitude Enterprise Edition includes all this plus full Service Level Agreement (SLA) monitoring, including alerting, a real time dashboard, and historical reporting. It also features advanced event correlation, a fully customizable Event Monitor (including the ability to define a display based on your own network topology), user experience monitoring (via synthetic web transactions), the ability to send SNMP traps, and J2EE application monitoring. You can schedule reports to run on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule, and an archived reporting portal allows you to publish reports for viewing by particular types of users (e.g., SLA reports for business managers).

In a nutshell, those are the differences between the new packages. A few people have also asked what happens if they start out with Longitude Standard Edition but then wish to upgrade to either Professional or Enterprise. This is handled easily through the licensing, so if you decide to upgrade, you do not need to reinstall or reconfigure the software. All you need to do is enter a new license key.

Posted by: Dick Levin, VP of Development

December 28, 2007 - Thoughts for the New Year

Although a good 80% of the optimism expressed this time of year inevitably seems like New Year’s hype, I can honestly say that we are excited about what 2008 holds for Heroix. Having been in the performance monitoring software space as long as we have, we have seen many changes over the years – from the early days when it was enough to keep an eye on basic system performance – disk space, CPU time, and batch and print queues – to today’s standard of multiplatform application performance and network monitoring. Amid all the mergers, acquisitions and fadeouts in our industry, Heroix has remained a player because we do three things: we deliver a robust product, we take care of our customers, and we adapt to change.

It’s that last point – adapting to change – that has energized Heroix for the New Year. As we’ve seen IT organizations’ monitoring needs grow from simple system monitoring to encompass applications, service level agreements and user experience, Heroix has enhanced our software to provide the highest levels of functionality, scalability, and customizability in the most user-friendly way possible. We still do that, and will continue to.

However, we also recognize that many IT organizations either have budget constraints or simply do not yet need enterprise class monitoring, and so a few weeks ago we introduced two new Heroix Longitude versions packaged and priced to meet the needs of smaller and mid-sized businesses. Joining our existing “top-of-the line” Longitude Enterprise Edition are: Longitude Standard Edition, packaged to fit the needs and budgets of small to medium-sized businesses; and Longitude Professional Edition, for mid-size to larger companies. So, as we head into 2008, we are pleased to be able to offer Longitude at prices accessible to every budget. Now proactive monitoring is feasible for small to mid-size companies, with the proven robustness and out-of the-box usability that’s always been our hallmark.

On behalf of Heroix, I wish you all a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year in 2008.

Posted by: Rick Lane, President