Shunra VE 5.0, to be launched at Interop in Las Vegas, adds a VE Analyzer function that allows network or application experts to understand how a new application will work once it is deployed on a production network and to determine why certain transactions are slow.

"The Analyzer looks at data selected in the test and provides a transaction-by-transaction analysis that identifies the performance bottlenecks," said Amichai Lesser, director of product marketing at Shunra, in New York.

Shunra VE 5.0 allows network and application engineers to test the performance of new applications across simulated WAN connections. Once testing determines that performance won't be adequate for some remote locations, engineers can "run analyses and look at multiple reports, such as how much time is spent on the client and server or if too much time is spent on the network. You can see how efficient that transaction is," Lesser said.

Available reports include a transaction breakdown summary, application efficiency analysis, throughput and bandwidth usage, network and application error analysis, voice quality in MOS scores, and video-over-IP analysis.

The VE Analyzer was designed to speed the identification of bottlenecks and their cause. With the resulting information, enterprises can make more informed decisions on which application acceleration or WAN optimization technologies will deliver the best performance for the most critical enterprise applications, Lesser said.

"If the analyzer identifies the fact that this application is latency-sensitive, then you look at vendors with latency mitigation. If it's a bandwidth constraint issue, then you want a vendor that focuses on data reduction or compression," he said.

"We provide this as a service for companies - that need - to make quick decisions. They engage our services team to do the analysis for them," he said.

"WAN optimization now is hot, hot, hot. The timing is perfect for them," said Vanessa Alvarez, analyst with the Yankee Group. "I haven't seen this from any other vendor. It's pretty powerful," she said.

Shunra VE 5.0, available now, also adds the ability to emulate disaster recovery and network failover behavior for testing, and a library of some 150 network profiles captured from real-world network recordings that span link technology types and geographies.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International