Bluestripe to tackle application management in virtual environments

Today marks the launch of Bluestripe, a Research Triangle Park, NC startup focused on application service management in virtualized data centers.

The founders, former execs from Wily and IBM/Tivoli, maintain that most virtual servers deployed today support “non critical” applications such as file and print servers because there are no tools available today to manage transactional applications deployed across multiple tiers. 

The company’s first product, called FactFinder, allows IT administrators to manage application performance and availability across the data center. This platform, they argue, will allow users to deploy more multi-tier business critical applications on virtual servers.  

FactFinder is available on Windows and will be available on Linux shortly. Bluestripe plans a big rollout at VMWorld.

“There’s another segment just coming forward [in virtualization market] -- transactional applications which have been run for years on mainframe systems and Unix systems and have web front ends. Companies are virtualizing various tiers, web tiers, mid tiers, and some parts are not going to virtual platforms, “ said Vic Nyman, CO of BlueStripe.

He said the driver for virtualizing the first set of non critical applications was ost, while the big driver for virtualizing complex applications is flexibility. “It’s aimed at application support people taking part or a whole application from a physical server to a virtual server. Application owners can turn to infrastructure person and figure out and solve why applications or parts of applications in virtualized environments are slowing down so they can tweak it and fix it.”

The platform will handle application discovery and mapping as well as application health and performance.

The platform starts roughly at $5,000 and usually ends up at a $20,000 price point, Nyman said.