ClearApp, formerly Acsera, unveils app management

ClearApp, formerly Acsera, on Tuesday is announcing ClearApp QuickVision 6.0, providing model-based application management for SOA, J2EE environments, and enterprise portals.

With QuickVision, a model is used to provide a topological view of a composite application environment, said Jason Donahue, president and CEO of ClearApp. The company changed its name to better represent the company’s focus on application visibility.

“What we do that’s unique in the application management space is that we have a model-based approach that basically goes out and discovers all the code components of an enterprise application and, based on that, builds a hierarchical model of an application,” Donahue said. Root-cause analysis is performed, including visibility into code. Transaction performance and business logic flow across components are gauged.

Used in production and development environments and in design, architecting, and testing, QuickVision looks inside J2EE containers and examines application components. A comprehensive view of SOA and portal applications is provided from a performance management perspective. Finding the cause of application issues is much more complex in SOA environments because of the many different components, Donahue said. QuickVision provides a services-based view of environments.

The predecessor to ClearApp was Acsera Manager, which was used to integrate J2EE environments into legacy environments but did not provide full visibility into J2EE applications themselves.

ClearApp’s new focus on J2EE fits in with what one customer is planning.

“They’re getting much more support for standard J2EE apps, and that’s a direction that we will be moving toward just to get a little bit lower-level instrumentation,” said Scott Metzger, CTO of TransUnion’s TrueCredit.com, which provides online credit management.

“It would provide us the ability to dive deeper into the application monitoring,” said Metzger, who has seen a demonstration of QuickVision 6.0 but is still using an earlier product from ClearApp. TrueCredit.com has used Acsera Manager in an SOA to assist with root-cause analysis for application recovery.

Although QuickVison can visualize transactions with .Net systems, it does not yet provide visibility into .Net environments. That functionality is planned for early 2007, Donohue said.

QuickVision differs from network management platforms such as CA Unicenter and HP OpenView in that the other products provide a resource-based approach to monitoring and management while QuickVision offers deeper visibility, digging down into code, Donohue said. ClearApp’s offering can complement Unicenter or other network management products.

QuickVision 6.0 ships on Sept. 12, with list pricing beginning at $9,000.