WhatsUp Gold‘s device based licensing and low maintenance cost, ensures you always get the industry’s lowest TCO. Now, with this limited time special offer, WhatsUp Gold is even more affordable.

For a limited time only, you can mix and match plug-ins to turbocharge your WhatsUp Gold at a discounted price.

• Buy 1 plug-in: Get 10% off your plug-in order – Use Promo Code PLUG10
• Buy 2 plug-ins: Get 15% off your plug-in order – Use Promo Code PLUG15
• Buy 3 or more plug-ins: Get 20% off your plug-in order – Use Promo Code PLUG20

Learn more in our Solution Brief – or try WhatsUp Gold for 30 days!

IT Automation

Each year sees an increase in the amount of IT tasks and operations that can be automated. 2011 will be no different, according to Ennio Carboni:

As the number of networked devices inside and outside the enterprise continue to explode – both in infrastructure (e.g. routers, switches and systems infrastructure supporting video, and wireless app delivery) and end point devices (especially mobile handhelds, tablets, and netbooks) – higher automation is necessary to maintain control of management costs. Equipment vendors, software publishers and end user IT organizations are embracing automation in many ways – building and deploying more intelligent network devices, using virtualization-led dynamic provisioning and configuration to meet variable demand profiles and attempting to build closed loop management systems that can react to infrastructure changes. We’ve seen this coming: technology replacing humans in the workplace – case-in-point, HP laying off 9000 workers from their datacenter services unit.

Configuration Management and IT Security

However, the rapid growth in the number and complexity of network devices does have its drawbacks. As networks grow, so do the vulnerabilities associated with their configuration and security. Analysts estimate that more than 60% of network outages are caused by manual configuration errors at an annual average rate of 30+ errors per device. This has tremendous impact on maintaining IT security and compliance with internal and external regulatory policies. As a consequence, analysts predict that configuration management and IT security tools will continue to see robust growth in 2011 (Check out slide 4.)

If your network is undergoing the growth now found across the board and you don’t already have a configuration management tool in place, 2011 is the year to change that. A good configuration management tool allows you to automate the process and reduce your chances of an outage, while also notifying you when and where an outage occurs so it can be rectified quickly with little downtime.

Want to learn how to manage and grow your IT infrastructure without having to buy another server? There is useful little article floating around the web, titled Practical Steps for Building and Managing an Internal Cloud, by one of our network managers, Stephen Dalgar, and our Director of Product Marketing, Marina Gil-Santamaria.

By now we’ve all recognized the importance of virtualization and its growing prevalence among IT professionals. Moving to a virtual environment significantly reduces hardware costs and complexity, while increasing server utilization and reducing the overall cost of ownership. Here at WhatsUp Gold, we not only provide tools to monitor your virtual environment, we also share our best practices for virtualization with you. After all, we haven’t purchased a single server in almost three years of sustained network growth, so read on to learn how we achieved this.

When making a move to virtualization, there are steps you can take in order to stay organized and maintain efficiency. According to Dalgar and Gil-Santamaria, the following checklist proved indispensible when building our cloud:

1. Properly scope your virtualization project, objectives and goals, as well as success metrics
2. Get buy-in from all key stakeholders (sponsoring, business and technical)
3. Put a policy in place for how physical to virtual migrations are to be executed
4. Put strict controls in place to allow for VM creation
5. Closely monitor physical resources, cpu, interface, memory, and disk utilization.
6. Use Resource pools allowing production servers to take precedence over hardware.
7. Look for a management tool that offers single console monitoring across network devices, servers, applications, virtual resources, network traffic and events and log data
8. Inventory your physical and virtualized environments on an on-going basis
9. Overlay compliance and data security policies and organizational and management requirements
10. Don’t forget to monitor, alerts and report on critical vCenter alerts, there are actually 300+ vCenter events

You should also establish set infrastructure management strategies for when the cloud is in place.

WhatsUp WhatsVirtual is precisely the tool to help with the virtualization process with one console to manage both your physical and virtual environments. Once you have WUG you simply refresh your license to get automatic discovery, mapping and documentation of the physical servers and virtual resources that make up your entire infrastructure. WhatsVirtual also integrates with VMware API to collect performance metrics, gain access to key management tasks, and oversee VMware vMotion or High Availability live migrations. When your environment is in place you have the ability to control virtual machine actions like power on, power off, suspend, reset, and backup as well. Additional capabilities include workspace reports for physical host servers, virtual machines, and virtual clusters; and seamless integration into the WhatsUp Gold Alert Center.

Learn more about WhatsUp WhatsVirtual or download your free 30 day trial!

Now through August 15, buy WhatsUp Gold WhatsVirtual at a Special Introductory Price!

To learn more about building and managing a virtual environment, view the full article.

As of July, WhatsUp Event Archiver, an important tool for audit requirements and regulatory compliance, has been certified for compliance with all U.S. Army and Department of Defense (DoD) standards of security, compatibility, and sustainability.

The Certificate of Networthiness (CoN Cert #: 201004611) allows WhatsUp Event Archiver to serve as an enterprise software product that can be deployed in the Army Enterprise Infrastructure Network utilized by the U.S. Army, all National Guard, Army Reserve and DoD organizations. Event Archiver enables the Army to streamline the process of clearing, collecting, consolidating, and storing log data for auditing and compliance purposes, while at the same time exceeding the strict security, sustainability, and interoperability requirements that are in place.

Event Archiver automates log collection, clearing, and consolidation as part of the WhatsUp Event Log Management Suite. The Suite also includes WhatsUp Event Analyst, for event examination, log trends analysis, and reporting; WhatsUp Event Alarm, for monitoring, alerting, and real-time notification of key events; and WhatsUp Event Rover, for on-the-fly forensics and log data mining.

To learn more about WhatsUp Event Archiver and the rest of the Event Log Management Suite, click here.

Try it free for 30 days!

It ‘s now back to work as usual for many of us here at Ipswitch’s Network Management Division after an exciting trip to Vegas. CiscoLive proved to be a great launching platform for the WhatsUp Gold Engineer’s Toolkit; interest in this free, limited-time offer was widespread during and after the show.

For those of you unaware of the toolkit release, the WhatsUp Gold Engineer’s toolkit, valued at $995, is now available for free. You can now simplify many common network management tasks like configuration, credentials, design, diagnostics, discovery, and verification of Cisco devices. If you weren’t lucky enough to make it to Vegas for the show, the toolkit is still available for download on our website.

To see pictures of the show, visit our facebook page.

In other news, WhatsUp Gold v14.3 is now available! Check it out now with a free 30 day evaluation.

The name of the tournament speaks a lot to just how huge the World Cup is in the scheme of worldwide sporting events. The hype and anticipation around the tournament has been steadily growing since the groups were selected back in December. It has received coverage everywhere from local newspapers to espn.com. Videos and commercials have gone viral in a matter of hours as they are played over and over again on Youtube. And now here we are,  less than 24 hours away from kick-off.

It’s no surprise that a tournament of this magnitude, that only comes around every four years, were to receive so much hype. Here at Ipswitch, though, we were more concerned with the effect the World Cup was going to have on the performance of networks in regards to companies’ bandwidth consumption jumping as tournament games are streamed live during work hours.

It was our hunch that companies could expect a spike in their bandwidth usage do to live streaming of World Cup games, specifically in Europe and other countries with competing teams. We tested our theory with the creation of our Network Traffic Calculator, and after weeks of collecting data from uses of the calculator, we are happy to report that our expectations are right in line with those of network managers. We collected over 1000 responses through the calculator, and some of our key findings were as follows:

• Bandwidth use is expected to increase by 38.85% in participating World Cup Nations to 86.89% during matches
• In Europe the figure is expected to double, from 40.25% current average bandwidth use, to 78.67% during key match times
• In the UK, despite the culture for some businesses to close during England matches, bandwidth use is still expected to increase by 30.79% to 71.85% of total capacity.
• In host nation South Africa, IT Managers are bracing themselves for network bandwidth to be completely maxed out to 100% from a base average of 58% during a typical working day.
• Despite not being typically thought of as a football watching nation, the US is somewhat surprisingly expecting bandwidth use to rise to over 80% during some key matches

Check out the Network Traffic calculator for yourself and see what kind of spike in bandwidth usage your network can expect as the World Cup commences.

Network Managers, as you know, don’t typically have a lot of down time on a day-to-day basis.

It seems there’s always some network or user issue popping up (and in most cases it’s more than one issue at a time) so you find yourself running around trying to keep the network running and the users happy.

Monitoring and maintaining your network traffic and bandwidth utilization used to be an overlooked aspect of your job, deemed less important. But the rapid evolution of technology has changed the makeup of networks everywhere and has forced network managers to include Flow analysis and monitoring in their network management strategies.

Not only will including this in your strategy allow you to maintain control and ensure of the peak performance of your network’s bandwidth, it will also ensure your network is not at risk of viruses, malware attacks or any other malicious behavior.

A proper Flow monitoring tool delivers peace of mind, allowing you to have confidence that your network is secure and your bandwidth is not being consumed with such capabilities as:

• Support for Popular Flow Formats: The ability to monitor NetFlow, sFlow and JFlow, with support for switches and routers from vendors such as Cisco, Extreme, Juniper, HP and more
• Visibility into Network Bandwidth Utilization:Complete, real-time visibility into QoS and exactly how your network bandwidth is being used to ensure optimal network performance
• Comprehensive Reporting:Collection of NetFlow, sFlow and JFlow records and conversion into useful reports which track real-time usage as well as historical trends
• Threshold Based Alerting: Receiving alerts in real-time when configured thresholds are exceeded allow you to proactively troubleshoot and resolve performance bottlenecks and eliminate malicious behavior

WhatsUp Gold Flow Monitor is a network traffic analysis solution that offers all of these benefits, allowing you to focus on other business-critical projects while giving you the peace of mind that your network is constantly performing at its peak. Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here is Claudio Robles, one of our WhatsUp Gold experts, offering more insight into the benefits of Flow Monitor.

Happy Birthday YouTube!

Did you know that while the online video giant’s official birthday is February 14, 2005, it was exactly five years ago today that the very first video was uploaded? Well if you didn’t, now you do.

The video was titled “Me at the Zoo,” shot by Yakov Lapitsky. It was just 19 seconds long and featured one of YouTube’s founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo . . . and it marked the beginning of a new way to share and view video online.

As a business, Ipswitch, Inc. has come to rely heavily on YouTube to help distribute content – from tutorial videos to viral videos – about our WhatsUp Gold product.

If you haven’t already, check out our library of video on the IpswitchWhatsUpGold Channel. You’ll find an extensive list of tutorial videos walking you through nearly every aspect of our product.

As always, we rely on your feedback to make all aspects of WhatsUp Gold the best IT management solution  we can – so if you have an opinion, don’t hold back and comment here!

Ipswitch, Inc. hasn’t forgotten its humble beginnings. In fact, we’re proud of our past.

Roger Greene founded Ipswitch, Inc. in 1991.  We started off small, but thanks to his vision and business savvy and the support of our customers, it’s been nearly twenty years and we’re still private and profitable!

Starting a small business takes moxie. As passionate people ourselves we appreciate that trait in anyone.

It’s for that reason we’re proud to announce that Ipswitch Network Management will donate $1 for every download of its WhatsUp Gold software to Accion USA through May 31^st. 2010.

Accion USA, a leader in U.S. microfinance, provides affordable small business loans to microentrepreneurs.

If you’ve been putting off giving WhatsUp Gold a try, Stop and download today. Not only will you make your life easier, you’ll be making the life of a small business owner somewhere in the U.S. easier too!

Software should make your life simpler.

That’s been the mantra of our WhatsUp Gold developers from year one, nearly 20 years ago.Today, this dilegence and commitment to our customers was vindicated by NetworkManagementSoftware scribe, Aaron Leskiw.

Leskiw conducted an in-depth review of WhatsUp Gold Premium, focusing on the usability and simplicity of the product in relation to the robust feature set that it delivers.

Leskiw’s bottom line on the review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition was: “The big question is: Does WhatsUp Gold deliver on its promise of making your job easier? Yes it does – and very well! All of the features tested performed superbly and the software was simple to install.

Share in our success (afterall, it’s with your feedback that we’ve successfully developed our user-friendly IT Managemetn solution!) and check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review

Check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review

A recent review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition from Aaron Leskiw on networkmanagementsoftware.com poses the question: Does network management have to be complicated?

Obviously, we think it should be just the opposite, and build our network management solutions with the goal of making the life of a network administrator that much easier. Leskiw conducted a pretty in-depth review of WhatsUp Gold Premium, focusing on the usability and simplicity of the product in relation to the robust feature set that it delivers.

The bottom line on the review of WhatsUp Gold Premium Edition? Well Leskiw had this to say: “The big question is: Does WhatsUp Gold deliver on its promise of making your job easier? Yes it does – and very well! All of the features tested performed superbly and the software was simple to install.

Check out the full review here: http://www.networkmanagementsoftware.com/whatsup-gold-premium-review