Aternity joins Red Hat to attract Linux customers

Aternity, a next-generation end-user experience management platform for enterprise IT, Tuesday joined the Red Hat ISV Partner Program as a Red Hat Ready Partner receiving access to the tools and resources necessary to develop and test Aternity's "frontline performance intelligence platform" on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

By joining the Red Hat programs, Aternity can take advantage of the program's co-marketing and co-branding offerings to attract Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.

"We recognize the exceptional technology developed by Red Hat and are excited to incorporate Red Hat solutions with our platforms," said Trevor Matz, president and CEO of Aternity in a statement. "The key to understanding and managing the enterprise-wide end user experience lies in the ability to support 10s of 1000s of end points across an enterprise, while integrating with existing enterprise technologies and solutions. With Aternity's platform tightly integrated with the Red Hat technology stack, organizations running Red Hat Enterprise Linux are offered the scalability and interoperability demanded by the most critical environments."

End-user experience management, also called application performance monitoring, is a estimated US$3.5 billion market, according to Gartner.

Aternity addresses the problem of IT departments not being aware of problems employees are having with applications until they alert a help desk. About 74 percent of IT or application problems are not detected by IT infrastructure management, but rather by calls to help desks, according to a 2006 Forrester Research report.

Aternity's Analytics and Correlation Engine takes a new approach by fusing application performance monitoring and business intelligence tools making computers self monitoring so IT is aware of specific problems employees are having with applications prior to being alerted by the employees themselves.That insight can help companies improve productivity, provide more informed computer and application capacity planning, and eliminate business disruptions.

Aternity, which employs 60 people, has sold its products to more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies, Matz said. It is focused on companies with large number of employees distributed in different locations using mission-critical applications in vertical markets such as health care, transportation, retail, financial services, and manufacturing, he said.

The Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform is compatible with the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and runs on x86 architecture on both 64-bit Intel and AMD systems.

"By deploying Aternity's platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, our clients are given the opportunity for their application performance management strategies to meet the highest levels of compatibility,manageability, and scalability," said Eden Shochat, Aternity's chief technology officer and co-founder.

Aternity competes against older application performance management platforms by Mercury/HP, BMC, Compuware, and Citrix/Edgesight. Aternity secured Series A funding in 2005 totaling US$7.5 million and a Series Bround of $6.5 million in April 2007. Investors are Intel Capital,Vertex Venture Capital, Genesis Partners, Clal Industries and Investments LTD.