March 19, 2001

Mutek's Black Box Flight Recorder for Software
Increases Application Availability

When dinosaurs roamed the earth, applications were developed over months and went live in schedules that included time for test, refinement, and training. Today, systems are architected in boardrooms, coded on the fly, and stress tested on paper before being sent to the frontline of e-Business. Old approaches to resolving new problems just don't work in Internet time.

As a Flight Recorder Is to a Plane ...

When a plane's technology fails, rescuers move heaven and earth to locate the black box. The reason? Flight voice and data recorders are vigilant witnesses to the facts of a flight and contain information that is critical for determining the cause of a failure. In turn, that knowledge holds the key to avoiding such failures in the future.

Mutek's solution offers the software equivalent of a black box flight recorder. Designed to automatically record the online operation and interactions of applications, Mutek's "Black Box Flight Recorder for Software" is continuously available to report or replay events as they actually happened. Remote access or offline replay of the Black Box recording lets users replay a scenario in complete synchronization with runtime processes. System administrators, IT help desk staff, and software developers gain insight into the dynamic application execution behavior - in real time. Best of all, the software requires zero change to applications and is completely transparent to runtime programs.

... Mutek's Black Box Is to Applications

Mutek's Black Box runs on servers and clients to monitor applications "in flight." Recording into a cyclical buffer or file of configurable size, the Black Box captures the internal operations of a program as well as any interactions with the external environment. When problems occur, the Black Box provides forensic evidence from three distinct perspectives:

1. User: visual replay of client interactions or - for servers - performance monitoring data;

2. System: runtime behavior dynamically correlated to system indicators and user interactions; and

3. Code: line-by-line execution mapped to all internal program states and dynamically loaded elements.

The solution not only replays failed scenarios, but also provides alerts prior to application failures. Thus, Mutek's Black Box solution makes it possible to avoid the repetition of some errors - and prevent others from ever happening in the first place.

Improved Application Availability

Problem resolution in most organizations tends to err in one of two extremes: either a failure is left to crawl its way up the escalation food chain - exhausting all resources and requiring more information at each stop - or the company throws money and people at a problem until it goes away. Common to both approaches is the inability to quickly isolate the root cause of an application failure.

Mutek's solution penetrates the application level to pinpoint the origin of the error. System administrators or help desk personnel can monitor events formed from the interaction of an application with its infrastructure environment. The events are dynamically presented in the context of a specific run and include such information as machine configuration, file system and registry operations, dynamic-link libraries, and transactions.

Mutek's Black Box provides a smooth escalation path from frontline support to development in one unified solution. When the Black Box is escalated to development, developers see processes, functions, variables, threads, and even line-by-line execution of the program - forward or backward. A single solution that gives both help desk talent and developers exactly the information each needs to do their jobs saves time-to-resolution as well as resources. This common ground makes for a streamlined escalation process, increased application availability, and a swift return on investment (ROI).

Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Intel

First, Microsoft standardized on Mutek's solution across its development, test, and support organizations for both client and server applications. Then, Sun announced a joint development and marketing relationship in which Mutek will deliver its Server Black Box for the Solaris environment. A sizable infusion of venture-backed funding from the Intel 64 Fund, UBS Capital, and other leading venture capital firms is earmarked for aggressive execution on Mutek's initiatives for the IA-64 family on Windows and Linux.

Aberdeen Conclusions

Aberdeen anticipates success for this company as it leverages first-rate technology and established partnerships with industry giants. There is a real need for the functionality of Mutek's products, as well as a growing awareness of that need. The demands of e-Business compress application lifecycles and almost guarantee some system instability. There is no time to troubleshoot a lab-based scenario when time-to-market equates to revenue lost or gained. When downtime is real money.

Like an emergency medical team operating in an ambulance, the talents from IT operations, support, and development all need to learn how to resolve problems in live applications - on the run. Mutek provides the insight into application behaviors that makes such teamwork a realistic goal, and one that is painless to put into practice.

- Valerie O'Connell

This Document is for Electronic Distribution Only
-- REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED --

Copyright © 2000 Aberdeen Group, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts

The trademarks and registered trademarks of the corporations mentioned in this publication are the property of their respective holders. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the publisher.