New Product Manager to take on TeVISTA

Generix has recently appointed a new product manager, Jason Batley, to support the launch of TeVISTA, the revolutionary new network management suite from Chevin Software. Generix and Chevin have been working together for some time now and the addition of Jason should strengthen the relationship further and ensure the success of TeVISTA.With over ten years experience of customer support and account management, Jason is confident that he can continue to provide the quality of service to which Generix customers have become accustomed. He is certain that the unique philosophy behind the development of TeVISTA will make it indispensable to companies who are serious about network stability and performance.

TeVISTA is to be officially launched in the UK in November and provides customers with a proactive tool for monitoring and fine tuning their network for optimum performance and minimum network down-time as well as being able to produce network health check reports at the touch of a button."Like many, I had not heard of TeVISTA before moving to Generix, but the more I use the software the more I am convinced it will become commonplace across IT departments, as more and more IT professionals get the opportunity to evaluate the product and see its benefits."

Jason Batley

Jason is currently arranging on-site demonstrations of TeVista and working with the Generix marketing team to promote Network Management Seminars across the UK for interested clients.

9th November 2000: Today, Generix partners Chevin has announced the launch of TeVISTA – a new network optimization and management software system that is designed for organizations where total network availability is critical.

As well as providing historical reports, TeVISTA gives a real-time overview of everything that is happening on today’s complex networks - enabling far better scaling and planning than has been possible in the past. Potential problems can be foreseen and avoided so that downtime is eliminated and network capacity can be scaled accurately to meet demand.

"Most network management systems are still stuck in the dark ages," says Chevin CEO, John Earley. "They are based on rules and principles that were developed two decades ago and are too expensive and complicated to be appropriate today. Performance has traditionally also been an enormous problem – people have been switching their Network Management Systems (NMS) off because they are too slow or because, ironically, the overheads involved actually start to destroy the network they are supposed to be protecting.

"Chevin is in the vanguard of a fresh approach that recognizes what is really needed today for e-businesses, companies offering SLAs (service level agreements) and other network-critical applications. The new approach is evident in TeVISTA: it provides total network visibility without putting any unnecessary burden on the network. It can be deployed on a wide-scale basis so that even small, remote sites can be managed effectively at a low cost." 

For maximum efficiency TeVISTA utilizes Chevin’s proprietary HSRmon (High Speed Remote MONitoring) protocol which interworks with the industry-standard Rmon (Remote MONitoring). This puts a vast array of easy to interpret statistical information at the fingertips of network managers, enabling them to identify the root causes of problems before they affect users’ services. Importantly, HSRmon employs a number of mechanisms to ensure that management data is transmitted very efficiently across networks: something that is not possible with traditional SNMP/Rmon systems.

With one or more TeVISTA consoles at the central site and a PodLink software agent at each Ethernet or Token Ring LAN/switch port, the management of distributed networks is particularly easy. The PodLinks operate as a background task under Windows 2000, NT, 98 or 95. Individual LANs or the entire network can be monitored through TeVISTA with PodLinks reporting alarms and statistics.

A range of conditions such as under or over usage, bandwidth overload, intruder alarms and notification of new devices can be identified. Notification can be by pager, mobile telephone or email (need to add using 3^rd party apps)if the network manager is out of the office, with an automatic email alert apparently not until the next version to users about network problems if desired. TeVISTA’s JAVA interface enables network statistics to be viewed across an Internet or Intranet connection, so that network problems can often be resolved remotely.

An intuitive graphical interface enables total network visibility – from top-level enterprise summaries to detailed device interrogation. All network entities are represented as graphical icons and a sophisticated auto-discovery program enables devices and machine names to be identified, saving considerable time during configuration.  

Devices can be allocated to departments or groups for accounting and budgeting.Limitless statistics are available including network utilization data volumes, packet counts and profiles, protocol data, conversation analysis and TopN lists – by LAN, groups of devices, departments or individual nodes. Filters can be customized as required and statistics presented as linear graphs, data lists and pie charts as well as CSV formatted data. A detailed log of network activity is saved to hard disk, avoiding the need to wait for problems to reoccur or be recreated before they can be resolved.

TeVISTA gives users the opportunity to track and monitor SLA conformance accurately by recording response times from nominated devices throughout a network. As well as collating response time data for reports – typically using Microsoft Excel – TeVISTA graphically displays performance information against pre-defined thresholds for which alarms can be generated when breached.

It is also straightforward to guard against misuse of Internet activity. Powerful address resolution facilities convert IP addresses, including web site URLs, into plain English names for simplified understanding of end-to-end relationships. The performance of private IP networks can be monitored and measured, enabling the accuracy of routing tables and WAN efficiency to be verified.