A variety of other startups, including San Jose, Calif.-based Euclid, Keynote Systems and NetReality, as well as old-line software providers such as BMC Software, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, also offer various types of performance management tools. The products differ on the basis of price, scalability and component source monitoring features. Product prices can range from $100,000 to $500,000, depending on the size and scope of monitoring. Ideally, these multiple paths to performance management should let CIOs select the best tool for their needs. But the wide-open marketplace can also lead to confusion. "You have to understand what are the important processes and services that you’re delivering, and what needs monitoring," says Gaughan, "before you can apply the technology."

Tying It Together

Wells Fargo’s Tumas, who oversees a number of departments within the Internet services development department, selected Mercury Interactives’ Topaz technology to replace a variety of monitoring programs developed in-house. Topaz monitors four Web-based business lines that handle an array of consumer and commercial financial services as well as Wellsfargo.com. "The old tools simply weren’t keeping pace with the rapid growth of Wells Fargo’s IT and Internet services. They weren’t scalable or Web-enabled," says Tumas. "You outgrow your tricycle to go to a bigger bike?that’s what happened to us."

Tumas says he picked Topaz for its ability to provide holistic monitoring capabilities. "For a long time, we had individual alarms within each application, but nothing to tie everything together," he says. Topaz boosts staff productivity by pinpointing the root cause of performance problems anywhere within the Web infrastructure, such as on an Internet backbone. By doing so, the software lets staffers detect problems that might have gone unnoticed, such as unacceptably slow response times. "If you’re not monitoring end to end, you may not even have an idea that you have a problem until your customers start flooding your call center," says Tumas.

Like many enterprises, Wells Fargo relies on a Web environment that’s been built in piecemeal fashion over several years. Such an arrangement can make finding and fixing performance problems a complex and time-consuming task. The company’s consumer Internet service, for example, runs on a mainframe connected to an assortment of firewalls, proxy servers, load balancers and middleware. Tumas says Topaz lets his staff cut to the heart of a problem, such as a last-mile communications bottleneck, before it has the chance to affect large numbers of customers. "Saving time is critical," he says. "That’s the key benefit the software provides."