BEZ Systems, a provider of predictive performance management (PPM) solutions for databases, has announced the availability of a new Performance as a Service (PaaS) program. Performance as a Service combines the BEZVision predictive performance software with in-depth knowledge and advice from database and performance experts to deliver advanced database performance intelligence. This combination allows IT departments to be more proactive in providing service delivery to their organizations, reduce costs, and improve IT efficiency so they can shift their focus toward providing business solutions and away from firefighting performance crises.
Initially, the PaaS program will focus on Oracle databases, followed by the Teradata Purpose-Built Platform Family, and then Microsoft SQL Server in the third quarter of 2009. BEZ Systems is initiating the service with two well-respected industry partners: Ntirety (U.S.) and Application Performance (U.K.). BEZ is also actively recruiting and training additional service partners.
Performance as a Service shares similar concepts with the accelerating software as a service (SaaS) market in that it lowers the barrier to entry and exit, adopts pay-as-you-go pricing, has no maintenance fee and can expand or contract easily. However, it comes with an expert operator for hands-off operation. Company personnel don't have to be trained and assume responsibility for the continuous operation. Having expert advisors in database performance manage the analysis and reporting activities provides companies with the benefits of predictive technology and allows them to focus their personnel on adding business value in other critical areas.
Performance as a Service employs advanced analytical software, BEZVision, installed at a customer site and also provides a Performance Intelligence Advisor (operator) for that site. Performance as a Service is offered in two separately priced levels. Level 1 PaaS delivers detailed performance metrics on database performance through web-based dashboards and reports. Typical customizable deliverables include daily and weekly dashboards with monthly status meetings. This information details past, present and future (predicted) service levels (response time, resource consumption and throughput) highlighting anomalies and future service breaches months in advance. It allows companies to postpone upgrades once they're assured that service will meet application and workload requirements well into the future. In the event that upgrades are required, they can tailor the type, size and associated cost to solve the problem without over-provisioning.
Level 2 PaaS provides all of the features and benefits of Level 1 and also provides "what-if" capability to understand how change will affect future service delivery. This includes projects such as growth in users and data, surge management, hardware change (server or storage), server/application consolidation, new application introduction, resource limits/priority execution changes, storage requirements planning, load testing extension, database configuration adjustments and database schema modifications.
John McHugh, vice president of marketing for BEZ Systems, tells 5 Minute Briefing that the focus of the BEZVision software is on managing database workloads rather than optimizing individual SQL queries. "The software collects all the information required about a given database environment, and then employs advanced analytics to automatically build workload management models. Operators can then use these models to predict future performance, assess when performance breaches may occur, and do what-if analysis on numerous workload variables."
For more information on BEZ Performance as a Service and BEZVision software, go here.