Pulsar xSP 1.5 promises to give service providers early warnings of SLA violations and the ability to interactively monitor all SLAs for all clients as well as VPN, VoIP, and openwave monitoring.

by Wayne Kawamoto [May 13, 2002]

Response Networks recently announced the availability of its Pulsar xSP 1.5 Service Level Management Solution. Targeted at service providers, the Pulsar xSP promises to warn providers of impending SLA violations, interactively monitor all SLAs by client and service policy, and manage VPN and VoIP applications. According to the company, Pulsar xSP 1.5 is the only solution in the industry that provides premium monitoring for Openwave's e-mail application, a complex, mission-critical solution that's offered by many service providers.

Pulsar xSP 1.5 is designed to help service providers build secure SLM portals for their clients. It is designed to be a scalable, carrier-class solution that can handle a Tier 1 service provider's customer base. Its management features should help providers control their client-side obligations, and manage and control their own outsourced services. Its scalable, open architecture was built on industry standards (i.e. XML, HTTP, and SSL) which should help service providers perform multiple tests and deliver metrics for application performance and network quality agreements, and deploy testing points of presence in-house or behind firewalls at the customer premises or demarcation point.

New features in the Pulsar xSP 1.5 include:

SLA early warning alerts
Using Pulsar xSP 1.5, providers should be able to predict, based on historical analysis, when they will violate individual SLA agreements. Pulsar xSP 1.5 is designed to send automatic alerts to account and business managers when an SLA is at risk of being violated. This way, a provider can take the necessary steps to reduce that risk.

SLA report card
A new report card feature should help providers obtain real-time snapshots and historical perspectives for all SLAs over various time periods (today, last 24 hours, last week, last quarter). Using the reporting features, providers should be able to drill down by contract and client into actual monitoring data.

Robust monitoring
Pulsar xSP includes more than 100 application, network and system probes. Its remote agent administration should help service providers manage and monitor VoIP and VPN applications. It also includes proprietary data collection technologies that are designed to collect data from Openwave e-mail implementations.

"Service Level Management isn't just about creating an SLA and hoping it sticks," said Phil Hollows, vice president of product marketing for Response Networks. "Rather, it is an overall approach to proactively monitoring and managing all of the SLAs in place, from the application layer in conjunction with network data and on-premise/remote agent capabilities. Forward-thinking companies recognize this need and are turning to solutions like Pulsar xSP that are flexible, feature-rich, and scalable enough to grow their needs as they adopt and refine their offerings. As more and more companies turn to service providers and the outsourcing model, they'll turn to service providers who can guarantee delivery. They'll turn to service providers who have Pulsar xSP in place."

"Service providers are recognizing that truly valuable SLM solutions are early warning systems for impending violations," said Jasmine Noel, director at Hurwitz Group. "Solutions, like Pulsar xSP, that can deliver those capabilities significantly reduce business and operational risks."

Availability and pricing
Pulsar xSP 1.5 is available now.

Pricing begins at $40,000 for a server license and 20 software agents.

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