Company introduces package for managing service levels AmberPoint on Tuesday will introduce software for managing service levels in distributed Web services environments, the AmberPoint Service Level Manager.The product enables organizations to allocate Web services resources based on business value, set and manage service levels between consumers and providers, and resolve service problems before they result in business loss, the Oakland, Calif.-based company said.“It’s a comprehensive management system for Web services that optimizes quality of service according to business priorities,” said Ed Horst, vice president of marketing at AmberPoint. Targets can be set and the system automatically manages them, he said. Corrective actions can be taken such as load balancing or making tradeoffs for users of a system with lower priority than others. An early user of the product said he is using it in an environment that dramatically cuts the cost of making travel-related reservations.“Service Level Manager allows us to monitor the data services that we provide to our customers and stay within contract compliance so that we constantly have our uptime,” said Les Ottolenghi, CEO of Atlanta-based AgentWare. AgentWare provides Web services for the travel agency in which the company links to travel services suppliers to make reservations.The AmberPoint product enables AgentWare to understand when services are available. Through its Web services-based system that uses Linux-based hardware, AgentWare is able to provide services for about 50 cents per ticket as opposed to legacy systems that cost $12 to $15 per ticket, Ottolenghi said. “Service Level Manager is used to make certain we have a service level that stays high,” said Ottolenghi.Functioning in Java and .Net environments, Service Level Manager leverages the content and context of midstream XML messages to improve the utility of Web services systems, according to AmberPoint. Users can track operational objectives by collecting measurements and proactively manage service quality. Web services usage can be prioritized by user-defined criteria such as customer-type or order value.Service problems can be detected within federated, distributed environments and actions can be defined for mitigation in order to prevent service failures. Customers also can use the product for defining and measuring against project objectives. AmberPoint Service Level Manager will be generally available in the third quarter of this year, with prices starting at $50,000 for a system monitoring a limited set of Web services. Software Development