Denise Dubie

Survey shows three-quarters of CIOs have installed software and/or policies to control employee Web browsing

WAN-emulation vendors have unveiled updates to their testing tools that promise to give network managers more insight into how applications will perform under real-world conditions across the wide area network.

?Management software heavyweights BMC, CA, HP and IBM are barely making the grade with their customers, earning C and D averages and driving IT buyers to look elsewhere for their operations management needs, according to a recent Gartner poll.

The IT industry has seen much innovation over the years, none of which reduces the complexity of managing distributed environments, said the head of Computer Associates Inc.

Freeware has long reigned as a go-to tool for network managers. Applications such as Ethereal, Multi Router traffic Grapher (MRTG) and Snort provide an inexpensive means to monitor devices, traffic and security in even the largest networks.

CA has added software to its service oriented architecture (SOA) management arsenal that company officials say will let IT operations staff track the performance of loosely coupled SOA applications across production networks.

Indicative Software will unveil updates to its flagship service management software that the company says will enable IT managers to measure end-user experience with Web-based applications

When virus outbreaks and network downtime threatened customer data, Curtis Simonson faced a conundrum