MUSE Micromuse (MM)

Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq: MUSE), the leading provider of ultra-scalable, realtime business and service assurance software today announced that its BSM solutions have been enhanced with several market-first capabilities to provide the most advanced solutions for service visibility that are available today. These enhancements, which are made possible with the release of Micromuse's Netcool(R)/Realtime Active Dashboards(TM) v3.0 and Netcool(R)/Application Discovery(TM) v4.0 products, include greater end-user navigation of services, deeper realtime measurement of service health, extended discovery to include support for storage networks, and enhanced dynamic access to all service-related information. "Micromuse has extended native support for analysis of all key event types that affect the health and performance of a service, including availability, performance, security, and business events," said Craig Farrell, Micromuse's CTO. "While most tools limit service impact analysis to pure IT-related events, Micromuse's advanced analysis changes the state of a service based on any criteria that may impact service health, including changes in business transaction volume, changes in revenue, and the number of customers using a service at a given point in time. This is relevant to both operations staff that must troubleshoot problems, and line of business managers with profit and loss responsibilities." The increased functionality made possible by recent product enhancements permits Micromuse's BSM solutions to automatically discover cross-application, system, network, and storage dependencies to provide a dramatically detailed view of all relevant service dependencies. Additionally, the solution is able to maintain highly accurate service dependency models that are updated in realtime, not imported into a static model. "The latest release of Netcool(R)/Realtime Active Dashboards(TM) promises to set Micromuse apart as a leading innovator in the BSM market," said Casey Kindiger, CEO and Managing Partner of generationE Technologies. "Today we are working with some of the world's largest financial services organizations and communications providers to fast track their transformation towards BSM using Netcool solutions. My clients and I look forward to continued innovation within the Netcool product suite." These innovative BSM capabilities are essential to the combined strength of Micromuse with the IBM Tivoli IT service management portfolio, which provides a comprehensive approach to help customers reduce the complexity of their IT environments, lower operational costs, and address compliance mandates. Micromuse's enhanced BSM solutions will be available next month with the following product advancements: Netcool(R)/Realtime Active Dashboards(TM) v3.0 -- Realtime Business Metrics - a unique approach to collecting distributed data and calculating key performance indicators. Data sources include: databases, message busses, CRM, ERP, Web services, custom and legacy applications, as well as events. -- Active Service Navigation - aligns all moving parts of a service model in realtime to drive a live scorecard providing business and operational users with key performance indicators of service health. Scorecard content is updated in realtime and driven from any mix of data sources, including events, process workflow, and business activity sources. The scorecard views reflect the dynamic nature of a service, adapting in a manner that is relevant to both the service and end-user perspective. -- Dynamic Federated Information Model(TM)- leverages patented technology to actively collect dependency information from distributed data sources in realtime and dynamically updates the service model to assure accuracy. This delivers several key benefits when compared to competitive offerings, including allowing for the use of existing investments in CMDBs and discovery tools, enabling greater service model scalability, and assuring highly accurate service impact and root cause analysis. -- Universal Event Model - greatly extends impact analysis capabilities by collecting and monitoring for events and business activity from any source, including databases, Web services, CRM, ERP, and a variety of other sources. Further, its universal event support permits any type of business event, as well as availability, performance, and security events, to be processed and used to determine the true health and performance of a business service. Netcool(R)/Application Discovery(TM) 4.0: -- Storage Network Discovery - supports the discovery and mapping of storage area networks providing greater service dependency visibility. -- Operational Portal - allows the integration of additional configuration and device data from third party sources, extending the discovered application topology. The operations portal delivers full flexibility to customize native discovery information and enhance that information with relevant external data or user defined data. Benefits of Micromuse's BSM solutions include: -- Automated service impact and root cause analysis, bi-directional trouble ticket integration and right click access to change, configuration, and other vital intelligence streamlines service support processes, assures shorter mean-time-to-resolution and improves service availability. -- A single effective interface delivers live service visibility for both service support and service delivery managers. -- End-to-end visibility through transactional monitoring and end-user simulation for both Web-based and client-service applications. -- Comprehensive Internet service transaction monitoring for critical Internet services like FTP and DHCP. -- Light-weight, all-in-one application and system agents for monitoring and collecting configuration details across key platforms and applications including: Windows, Linux, Unix, Sybase, SAP, and Lotus Notes. These agents are deployed automatically, which lowers maintenance requirements and can be integrated with Micromuse's Netcool(R)/Proviso(R) solution for comprehensive performance and capacity planning. Product pricing information, demo, and screen shots are available upon request. About Micromuse Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq: MUSE) is the leading provider of ultra-scalable, realtime business and service assurance software solutions. The Netcool(R) software suite provides organizations with the assurance that their IT systems are supporting and driving profits 24 hours a day. Unlike traditional infrastructure management systems, Netcool solutions provide realtime end-to-end visibility and accurate troubleshooting from a business perspective. Such business intelligence allows organizations to respond to problems quickly, streamline workflow processes and improve business uptime. Micromuse customers include BT, Cable & Wireless, Deutsche Telekom, EarthLink, ITC DeltaCom, JPMorgan Chase, MCI, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Headquarters are located at 650 Townsend Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103; (415) 568-9800. The Web site is at www.micromuse.com. Micromuse and Netcool are registered trademarks of Micromuse Ltd. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners. Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements include the following: fluctuations in customer demand, the Company's ability to manage its growth (including the ability to hire sufficient sales and technical personnel), the risks associated with the expansion of the Company's distribution channels, the risk of new product introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological change which characterizes the Company's markets, the risks associated with competition, the risks associated with international sales as the Company expands its markets, and the ability of the Company to compete successfully in the future, as well as other risks identified in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission Filings, including but not limited to those appearing under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and on Form 10-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Company's Web site.