Network Associates and KPMG Team to Assist Organizations With Service Level Monitoring and Management
Companies Sign Agreement to Provide Services Based on Network Associates'
Network Informant Reporting Tool
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Network Associates (Nasdaq: NETA) today
announced that leading IT consultant KPMG Peat Marwick LLP will use Network Associates'
Network Informant enterprise reporting solution to facilitate KPMG's new business service
to provide customers with increased network visibility. The service is designed to help
businesses better manage and measure the complexities of third party and internal IT
services, to ensure cost control, successful implementations and contract fulfillment.
Network Informant is a key component of Network Associates' Total Network Visibility
suite of products, delivering superior network management for corporate environments.
KPMG's oversight methodology, based on Network Associates' Network Informant advanced
reporting technology, will allow organizations to establish and track service levels with
IT service organizations and outsourcers, and provide data in business-oriented reports
instead of raw technology data, to ensure agreements are truly being met. In turn, the
methodology allows IT service vendors, organizations and outsourcers to track their own
progress and help clients measure their success based on fair practices and mutually
pre-determined goals.
According to Larry Rodda, principal with KPMG Peat Marwick LLP, a company's visibility
into service levels provided by both internal and external IT organizations is essential
to maintain the confidence, support and investment in technologies critical to its
business.
With its highly customizable and flexible web-based reports for service level
management and cost control, Network Informant will help make KPMG's new service and
oversight methodology possible. Using this methodology and technology, KPMG is enabling
companies that use outside IT services, or depend upon their internal IT organizations,
to better gauge whether their contracts and expectations are being fulfilled. This
service will also help companies and departments that provide IT services to more
effectively measure and maintain customer satisfaction, track self progress and service
levels and overcome customer dissatisfaction that would be typically hard to quantify.
"Our clients absolutely require a higher and more sophisticated degree of
business-relevant reporting to make effective judgments about the services provided by
internal IT organizations or outsourcing providers," said James Mowrer, senior manager at
KPMG. "Network Informant enables us to collect the data required to effectively measure
and manage service levels provided by today's mix of clients and servers working together
in a complex network environment. This allows our customers to manage service levels
from a business perspective and evaluate the data to ensure they receive exactly the
service required."
"KPMG is demonstrating the power of enterprise scalability and flexibility of the
Network Informant reporting tool," said Joanne Evans, executive vice president of
Worldwide Field Operations, Network Associates. "The same technology that network
managers of large enterprises trust to monitor their networks, measure service levels and
control costs will help IT organizations become more accountable to their clients while
helping them to maintain customer satisfaction and accurately measure progress of IT
implementations."
Network Informant's key features include:
* Distributed Polling Architecture. Network Informant provides enterprise scalability
allowing it to collect data from any LAN or WAN network device by polling for SNMP MIB
data across the enterprise to produce reports on demand that give visibility into service
level performance. Network Informant also has an extensible polling engine that makes it
a more efficient and cost-effective monitoring device, only accessing the WAN for the
scheduled uploading of polling data to better utilize network bandwidth.
* Flexible Reporting Capabilities. Network Informant incorporates industry standard
Crystal Reports, enabling end users to create new customized business reports, or modify
the packaged report sets to their unique business needs.
* Service Management Reports. Network Informant produces standard reports that
document network availability and service levels. They compare current activity to
baseline values collected to enable users to identify trends that require management
attention and action.
* Cost Control Reports. Network Informant tracks WAN utilization levels to identify
over- and under-utilized links. Accountability reports analyze network congestion within
the service provider's cloud to ensure that all bandwidth being purchased is received and
available.
Network Informant is a key component of Network Associates' Total Network Visibility
Suite, providing users with the best of breed network and application management tools
for enterprise problem resolution. Leveraging the company's award-winning Sniffer
technology, TNV combines network fault management, reporting and planning into one
integrated suite, enabling companies to support the entire lifecycle of network
applications across today's leading and legacy technologies.
With headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Network Associates, Inc. is a leading
supplier of enterprise network security and management solutions. Network Associates'
NetTools Secure and NetTools Manager offer best-of-breed, suite-based network security
and management solutions. NetTools Secure and NetTools Manager suites combine to create
NetTools that centralizes these point solutions within an easy-to-use, integrated systems
management environment. For more information, Network Associates can be reached at
408-988-3832 or on the Internet at nai.com.
For more information on KPMG's involvement with this press release, contact James
Mower at 916-554-1631 or visit KPMG on the Internet at
us.kpmg.com.
/CONTACT: Tony Welz of Network Associates, Inc., 408-346-3021; or Kevin Kempskie of
Copithorne & Bellows, 415-975-2227, for Network Associates; or James F. Mowrer of KPMG,
916-554-1631/
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