FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AutoNOC 3.0 / Nadia Sneak Peak
Nadia Web GUI, Grid Computing, Groupware, SSL Security,
Nested Analytics, Developer Features, and More in 3.0!

ATLANTA, GA, January 10, 2007 - We are pleased to provide the first sneak peak information about AutoNOC 3.0, also called Nadia. This release builds on the successful porting of AutoNOC to 64-bit and scaling it to handle millions of probes. Nadia is the most ambitious AutoNOC release to date.

Let's take a moment to offer a quick tour of the key functionalities that are included in 3.0:

• Nadia Web GUI
  AutoNOC 3.0 debuts an all new, 100% native, direct-rendered interactive web based GUI. This new web GUI provides the capabilities customers have most requested while integrating everything on top of the distributed operations grid. It delivers on our design goal of making AutoNOC easier to use and more flexible in this next major release.

• Distributed Computing and Grid-Based Network Operations
  A cornerstone aspect of 3.0 is that AutoNOC finally becomes a true grid computing platform for network operations. Now what does this mean specifically? Nadia allows the user to link 1000s of different AutoNOC servers to create a large, fault tolerant, high-performance, global operations model. Data acquisition is spread across these many servers. Computer and storage resources are also used across these servers, called grid nodes, for computation of user views and other tasks. Grid node interactions have all been implemented in a very tight, high-speed, true asynchronous network communications model. In true distributed computing fashion, each AutoNOC grid node handles individual components of user views and aggregates the results in a seamless behind the scenes manner. The result is an easy to use, practical technology for managing and scaling to run the largest networks in the world.
  
  The following screenshot shows a sample distributed grid with 9 operations nodes.
  
  
  
  Another example of how the new grid technologies interact with AutoNOC 3.0 is shown in the screenshot below. This is a Set that has been extended to the grid model. When the user queries the set, it can return objects located all over the global operations model, across many different grid nodes. It is in this manner that AutoNOC is able to aggregate operations views across the network and across many servers.
  
  
  
  The AutoNOC distributed computing model is designed to, by default, provide a single seamless view across the entire network. However, it is flexible in that different nodes can be configured to behave differently for local operators, while allowing higher-ups to see more global network perspectives.

• Network Web Toolbars
  In order to make common tasks easier, this next release of AutoNOC provides collapsible Network Web Toolbars located at the tops of the major tabs. These toolbars implement general functionality, such as the ability to open views, the ability to create sets by picking them off HTML pages, a hierarchical narrowing operations model search, quick personalized alarms, and more!
  
  

• New SSL Security, Sessions Manager, Better Web Standards
  AutoNOC 3.0 makes use of a new, top to bottom, secure SSL based sessions manager that substantially improves it's security features. To make configuration easy, the software ships ready to roll with a temporary SSL certificate which the customer should substitute with their own. The sessions manager uses a new cookie based authentication method that allows users to be logged in multiple times (or the same account to be shared across users).
  
  

• Moving Averages, Aggregation, Advanced Analytics
  Want to compare this years network traffic with last years? Need to do this for many specific interfaces across the network in an aggregate manner? No problem. The new data sources screen, which is a part of every view integrates all data across the network for user views and the powerful new data source analytics in Nadia make this kind of thing easy. The user can inspect what data is being used in the view and even create new objects for the view that are nested transformations of existing objects.
  
  A screenshot of an example data sources view with an aggregate traffic transformation is shown below:
  
  
  
  What is novel about these new analytics capabilities is that they all seamlessly run on the distributed computational grid, so parts of the computation are handled in parallel across the grid nodes and the end user will never even really know this is going on.

• New Views and View Architecture
  Collect all the data you want in the world, if you don't have easy ways to put it to work for you, it's not worth much. This is why Nadia includes a completely revamped views architecture designed to better take advantage of the large stores of data customers are collecting about their networks. The new view architecture provides the flexibility to create personalized pre-canned views of the network for the user. These views can then be marked public and shared with other groups of users.
  
  Nadia includes new and revamped Bubble-Up, List, Graph, Alarm, Multi, and Map views. Each of these dynamic, interactive views can be customized to show only specific things and they can be pulled up very easily. An example of the sophistication of these capabilities and the new Nadia GUI is shown below with a nested 4x4 multi-view inside another 4x4 multi-view in the Nadia GUI. The user defines all the elements for the window very easily and AutoNOC adapts to the layout they create.
  
  

• Personalized Alarms
  One cool new feature that is coming to AutoNOC is the ability to create personalized alarms. It isn't always desirable to be forced to create a company wide alarm just for one person to monitor for a certain situation on the network. AutoNOC 3.0 includes the ability to create personalized alarms on a toolbar that only fire for the specific user that created it. It is possible to convert these alarms to public alarms as needed.

• Pop-Out Displays
  Working on ten things at once while keeping an eye on one or a few specific network variables can be a tedious task for support personnel. Having a full AutoNOC window taking up more screen real estate can be more annoying than useful in some cases. As such, a new capability in AutoNOC is the introduction of popped-out views. Any view in AutoNOC can be popped out into a small window specific to that view for the user session. This makes it easy to monitor specific things in a small window while working on other tasks.
  
  

• Photorealistic Graphing Engine
  One thing we have learned over the years is that people in network operations care a lot about how their graphs look. They want to be able to configure the graph exactly the way they want it. We have listened and Nadia sports a new graphing engine that makes use of some of the best techniques in data visualization to provide a vastly improved graphing experience. The engine includes support for anti-aliasing, color gradients, alpha-level transparency, new high-quality fonts, and other features without sacrificing AutoNOC's well-known ultra-quick graph rendering.

• Developer Improvements
  A number of customer-requested developer improvements are included with Nadia. Of particular note are the improved external URL linking features that make it much easier to use highly customized graphs and other AutoNOC GUI elements within other websites. The interpreter is improved in Nadia to support the new distributed computational model. Additionally there is a new Component template object that makes it easier to create custom components for custom probes that require fairly complex device relationships.

• Easy Software Updating
  Nadia installations may now use many server grid nodes. In order to simplify user management of these multi-grid node installations we have implemented an automated software subscription engine that allows the user to subscribe the nodes to be automatically upgraded to new releases as they become available. The updater includes three subscription types, Stable, Testing, and Experimental.  Because we have a wide variety of customer requirements, this subscription system allows the user to specifically choose their tolerance for bugs versus need for new features.

Early adopter customers will begin to do early distributed testing rollouts of Nadia toward the end of March. Parties interested in participating in testing should feel free to send us an e-mail at support@AutoNOC.com.

About AutoNOC LLC

AutoNOC LLC was organized in Atlanta, Georgia in 1999 by commercial software veteran Kyle Lussier to develop and market the AutoNOC core network operations platform. AutoNOC LLC is first to market with a cost effective, robust, fully integrated, Web based solution for integrated network operations. For more information, visit AutoNOC’s Web site at http://www.AutoNOC.com.