AlterPoint Announces New Network Lifecycle Management Capabilities

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AlterPoint, Inc. (www.alterpoint.com) a leading provider of open network management software, today announced NetworkAuthority Lifecycle 6.5, a groundbreaking network analytics solution that empowers companies to reduce overspending on hardware replacement and maintenance contracts. One AlterPoint customer has seen demonstrable savings of more than $1.6 million on maintenance and device replacement expenditures, and is projecting savings of more than $5 million over the next few years.

“Ask any CIO if they are overspending on hardware maintenance, or have an incomplete picture of their network inventory status, and you will probably get an earful”

“Ask any CIO if they are overspending on hardware maintenance, or have an incomplete picture of their network inventory status, and you will probably get an earful," said Larry Burton, senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. “The proliferation of network devices in today’s enterprises, coupled with a lack of automated collection controls, makes it difficult for companies to maintain an accurate picture of their network assets, or to understand their relationships to costs, contracts and business services. By giving customers a complete view of their network assets, AlterPoint is helping enterprises understand how maintenance and replacement decisions affect larger business objectives.”

Traditional network management products only provide reporting on the state of the network from an engineering and operations perspective. This ultimately leads to problems that include over- and under-buying of network assets, expensive off-contract and fragmented procurement, excess maintenance and support costs, and inadequate total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) data for budgeting, purchasing and planning.

NetworkAuthority Lifecycle 6.5 includes new capabilities that enable analysis and management of complex networks at a much finer level of granularity and precision:

Automated site standardization allows classification, analysis and management of devices based on geography, business unit or other similar preset or custom attributes.
Automated device criticality classification allows classification, analysis and management of devices based on a criticality rating scheme that is dynamically applied to all devices in the network. Device criticality settings update automatically based on network infrastructure changes – eliminating manual maintenance.

Together, these capabilities enable companies to more effectively provision, manage and optimize network devices based on factors such as criticality to the business, or logical or physical sites. By helping network managers make better business decisions about network asset aging, maintenance contracts, capacity management and site standardization initiatives, NetworkAuthority Lifecycle enables customers to:

Reduce overspending on hardware - know when critical devices reach end-of-life (EOL) or end-of-service (EOS); and proactively plan device replacement based on automated device criticality and site standardization calculations.
Reduce overspending on maintenance contracts - reconcile actual network device inventory with hardware vendor estimates; stop paying maintenance on out-of-service devices or devices that are already under contract; stop paying for high levels of service on non-critical devices; and find critical devices with incorrect or no maintenance coverage.
Plan and implement site standardization policies - determine how much a site deviates from the baseline across inventory, change and policy metrics; see the at-a-glance status of standardization efforts across sites, inventory, change and policies; and correlate sites with a high level of policy violations to issues with their inventory and change count.

“Time and again we see the two of the biggest areas of waste are inaccurate maintenance contracts and the premature replacement of less-critical devices,” said David Cramer, vice president of marketing. “AlterPoint is helping customers reconcile the differences between their network device inventory and the estimates provided to them by hardware vendors so they can make smarter, most cost-effective business decisions.”

NetworkAuthority Lifecycle will be generally available beginning May 1, 2008.

About AlterPoint, Inc.

AlterPoint open network management solutions optimize network spend and better align IT with business imperatives. The world’s most respected enterprises rely on AlterPoint to curb hardware over-provisioning, reduce specialized labor, lower the cost of compliance, and improve the availability of network services. AlterPoint’s open, comprehensive network CMDB combines operational and business data to automate, analyze and optimize network change, compliance, security and equipment lifecycles. Multiple stakeholders benefit from AlterPoint’s customizable analytics and dashboards for impact assessment, faster troubleshooting, compliance scorecards and trend analysis. Founded in 2001, AlterPoint is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.alterpoint.com.

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