AmberPoint is one of several companies that has developed software tools to monitor how well Web services applications run on corporate networks or over the Internet. Web services is a term describing a set of protocols and a method of building applications so that they can easily share information. Web services management tools spot glitches that can occur while an application is running. They also provide services, such as security.
AmberPoint's Service Level Manager is designed to show corporations how Web services applications perform against predefined criteria. For example, a company could use it to measure how quickly business partners are able to access a Web service that gives the status of a pending order. The application will be able to detect when the performance drops below a certain level and send an alert to network administrators to address the problem, AmberPoint executives said.
Service Level Manager will also be able to compile historical data to measure how well Web services applications are performing over time. This information is important to those designing how a network should be constructed in order to handle processing loads and to measure how much an application is being used, AmberPoint executives said.
The software will monitor Web services written with both Microsoft .Net development tools and those written to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition standard. It will work with AmberPoint's first product for monitoring Web services, AmberPoint Management Foundation, which it released last year.
Venture capital-backed AmberPoint, which has about 35 customers overall, said it is in early testing with customers now. Service Level Manager will be available this summer, starting at $50,000.