How do you accomplish this in today’s complex technology centered environment? You use technology. But not just any technology. You need a software solution that communicates with complex applications and makes sense of the information. You need software that uses complex event processing (CEP) and correlates both transactional and operational data at the same time – and in real-time.

A typical equities trading transaction could flow something like this. It begins with a client initiating a trade. This is handled by an equities trading WebSphere Application Server. The transaction is then routed through a series of routing applications on the WMQ platform. After passing through order routing, execution and account allotment, the transaction may go to a matching router on another MQ platform. From there it may be go through a messaging server on CICS on a mainframe running zOS, then back through WMQ before the confirmation of the order comes back to the point the transaction was initiated.

This is the way you hope your business transaction flows. But what if transactions are not flowing through correctly. At which point did the flow divert? Without a monitor in place that can identify where each transaction goes, it can take hours and sometimes days to discover where the problem is—time where expenses mount while revenue stops.

Nastel® AutoPilot® was designed to take what used to take hours and crunch it down to minutes. Not only does AutoPilot® identify the transaction flow, it identifies incorrect behaviors in the business transaction flow.

Take the typical equity trading example above. Let’s say that the order confirmation is not coming back. At which point during routing is there a problem? AutoPilot® identifies the location of the problem in the confirmation application. But it observes something else as well. Only some of the transactions are violating their SLA with settlement. What could be different between these transactions and the ones that are going through correctly?

AutoPilot® TransactionsWorks® begins drilling deeper for the source of that difference using the information it collects. Is it a bug, data, or configuration issue? Maybe a settlement application places messages into a series of queues on the mainframe. All but one queue works correctly, but that one queue isn’t sending out confirmation messages. The queue eventually times out, and client transactions are lost—money is lost.

Because AutoPilot TransactionWorks™ traces transactions at the java method, queue action and SQL call level, it tracks the exact sequence your application performs. This enables you to visualize the behavior of your transaction flows. Latency issues and transaction misbehavior are easy to spot. You can confirm that all your transaction flows remain on their best behavior.

*Charles Rich is the Vice-President of Marketing and Product Management at Nastel Technologies®. More information about what AutoPilot® TransactionWorks™ (Application Performance Management Software) could do for your trading or financial institution is available by contacting him about your business transaction needs today.

Why did Nastel® add Twitter to their software? Because it improves the ease with which communicated alerts reach a changing audience. Because it eliminates the need to know what technology is on the receiving end of an alert transmission. Now the IT team that is responsible for your company’s transaction management has the assurance that the messages that AutoPilot generates will get through to their destination.

Nastel® saw the potential in linking Twitter to its notification system because Twitter accounts can be set to send tweets to so many different applications. Network administrators and other technical staff don’t have to be at a computer station to receive notification that the AutoPilot® complex event processing (CEP) engine has detected a potential problem. Their Blackberry, Droid or iPhone are all that they need to remain connected with the health of their company’s business transaction process.

Nastel® also sees incorporating Twitter into their messaging system as a way to connect AutoPilot® to the world of Cloud Computing. This means that AutoPilot will be able to bring together the responsiveness that social networking is known for, work with services that are delivered from hosting services that are not located on site (contracted “cloud” hosting services) and continue to provide the type of business transaction monitoring services companies deserve.

Integrating Twitter power into their software platform is another way Nastel Technology is pursuing its objective to improve the ease with which their client can use their software.

About Nastel AutoPilot®
Nastel AutoPilot provides businesses with 360° situational awareness of both their operational and transactional data—reducing transactional latency and improving business transaction performance™ which ensures optimum service levels within your business while eliminating the hidden costs, or “stealth waste,” in your business processes. AutoPilot’s capabilities for transaction management, automated root cause isolation, performance analysis and determination of business impact enable you to improve your business process efficiencies and service levels while reducing your costs and managing your risks competently.

About Nastel®
Nastel Technologies® is a global provider of business transaction performance™ solutions for your mission-critical applications. Nastel is a privately held company headquartered in New York, with offices in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Mexico, and a network of partners throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. For more information, visit Nastel’s website at http://www.nastel.com/.

Here are just a few examples of significant data that AutoPilot® collects that could impact a manufacturer.

Mining the Internet for Targeted Data

If it would impact your operations AutoPilot® can be programmed to find it. Consider some of the following scenarios:

• A major chemical manufacturer that supplies a significant amount of a specific ingredient used in one of your best selling products has a fire at their plant. Your software is scanning the internet and notifies you immediately about the incident. You are able to find an alterative supplier within hours. Your production line remains efficient, and you avoid an income-reducing shut-down of your factory. If a shortage occurs for that product, you are there ready to meet the need.
• Civil unrest erupts in a country that supplies you with one of your components. The software is your first alert and keeps you updated on events as they occur in real-time. You start looking into alternatives immediately.

Deep-Diving into Your Applications
AutoPilot®’s CEP engine is set up to analyze the data about every application you use in your business. From one end of the business to the other, you can see what does what and when it does it. This ability to see 360° around your IT environment means that every application can function at peak performance. And when the system fails to perform, AutoPilot® tells you exactly what isn’t doing the job. Consider some of the following scenarios:

• AutoPilot® observes that one application is sluggish during peak demand on the system. A warning is issued, identifying the exact location of the slowdown, its root-cause and when it occurs. IT replaces the server and the problem is resolved before a critical breakdown occurs.
• AutoPilot® monitors all the components connected to the factory production line. AutoPilot® detects a delay in the speed at which one of the robots executes commands, preventing millions in product recall costs.

AutoPilot® isn’t psychic, but it is one of the best tools your manufacturing company could ever invest in. It will increase productivity on the factory floor. It will facility easier factory modification as new product lines are implemented. It will enhance the handling of business transactions.

To learn more about just where Nastel’s AutoPilot M6® suite of software could take your company, contact Nastel® today about our Application Performance Management Software.

You have every reason to be concerned that the next upgrade will cause a problem in the system. If you have ever had a Windows update cause your computer to go crazy, now imagine this in a server environment times 1,000.. If the upgrade does go haywire and its issues propogate out to your dependent applications and your clients, you need to identify the problem’s source within minutes, not hours or days.

Are you wondering, “Is there anything we can do to make deploying an upgrade to a crucial mission-critical business application less risky?” The answer to that question is yes. You can reduce your risk considerably by implementing a business application management system like Nastel’s AutoPilot M6 before you roll out your upgrade.

Here is what a business application manager like AutoPilot does.

• It can give you real-time information about how the current system is working, identifying processes in the current system that aren’t functioning or are performing below par. Imagine the implications if these problems aren’t found before the upgrade. Complete shutdown can result or worse faulty processing can mean major mop-up operations and even more costs – after the fact.
• Using a powerful complex event processing engine (CEP), AutoPilot can offer predictions on how the new application or equipment will integrate into the system – now enabling you to deal with the symptoms of issues long before they blow up into problems.
• AutoPilot allows you to modify the business views to fit your environment quickly and easily.
• You can build your environment variables into the equation and create the sensors that you need so the specific feedback you need as you start your upgrade is there almost instantly. If something is going wrong, AutoPilot can identify what and where.
• This business application performance management software makes live, real-time cut-overs much safer.
• The benefits don’t end with the upgrade. Continue running business application management software after your roll out to identify a host of potential issues before they impact your customers.

You don’t have to be a Fortune 1000-sized company to benefit from installing business application management software to evaluate and maintain the health of your IT environment. If your business is heavily dependent on volume transactions or complex communications, it is worth discussing with a Nastel^TM representative the specific needs of your company and whether one of the AutoPilot^TM M6 products would be the right solution for your business.

What does AutoPilot actually do?
AutoPilot performs several operations at once. This is possible because AutoPilot M6 has a complex event processing engine (CEP). This engine gathers information from existing systems in the business environment such as ESM tools, event monitors, dashboards and homegrown tools within the business. The complex event processing engine also gathers external feeds such as RSS. The M6-CPE engine then evaluates events and metrics based on dynamic, conditional and temporal attributes programmed into the software. Any failure to perform within parameters triggers action through alerts and event notifications. The M6-CEP engine also provides predictive analysis so that problems are identified in the early stages, instead of when they become customer critical.

Which operating systems does AutoPilot M6 work with?
The AutoPilot platform runs on Windows, Unix and Linux.

How do I view the information generated by AutoPilot?
AutoPilot provides a web-based business activity dashboard. The dashboard gives you the ability to monitor the status of all your business services. For example you can track transactions to prove service level agreement (SLA) compliance. If there is a problem, you can identify it and resolve it using the views provided through the dashboard.

How do I tell the CEP engine what to look for?
AutoPilot is designed with powerful policy wizards that use flexible policies. This enables a high degree of automation and rapid response to emerging issues.

What are the key benefits of Nastel’s AutoPilot M6 Suite?
Our customers find that Nastel’s AutoPilot M6 Suite provides them with three key benefits: 1) reduced costs; 2) improved service to their customers; and 3) easier compliance management.

How does AutoPilot reduce costs?
AutoPilot reduces costs in three ways. 1) The rapid deployment and prebuilt integration of this software into existing IT infrastructure cuts the cost of implementing the software. 2) Immediate root cause detection cuts mean-time-to-resolution from hours or days to minutes, saving considerable labor costs. 3) The automation of policies, remediation and built in notification provides an early warning system that prevents costly breakdowns that can cut productivity significantly.

How would AutoPilot improve my customer service?
AutoPilot reduces latency, meaning transactions are processed quickly. Also, the real-time 360° visibility into your infrastructure helps you identify resources such as servers that need to be retired or processes that aren’t efficient. Anytime you don’t have to respond to a customer trouble ticket, you have accomplished something positive for your customer service reputation.

How does AutoPilot make compliance easier?
Because AutoPilot is constantly monitoring all your transactions, you can ensure that you meet your SLA obligations. Penalties for non-compliance can swallow up your profits, so it is far better to find and fix problems before they impact your customers!

Would you like to learn more about how AutoPilot M6 Suite could make a difference for your business?
Contact us today for more information about our application performance management software.

Regulation is an unpleasant fact for banks, brokerages and other financial service organizations. The perception that these industries haven’t been regulated adequately has led to even stricter compliance requirements. It isn’t going to get any better for the financial services industry.

Technology has made it possible to process financial transactions faster than ever before. Consumers know it. They’ve lobbied congress to “protect” them from “big business.” Government has stepped in and established strict parameters for financial operations. If you provide a financial service, you must be ready to prove your compliance.

The need to provide a complete audit trail and real-time visibility of every transaction is vital in this environment. You need a risk management system that protects you if the timely and efficient flow of your transactions ever comes into question.

The best protection on the market today, is a software program called Nastel AutoPilot TransactionWorks™. This program provides both application performance management and transaction monitoring. Its overall comprehensive design offers unparalleled business transaction management.

Here’s how AutoPilot works:

• It provides a rules-based environment that allows you to track and manage transaction performance in real-time—capturing a complete audit trail while doing so.
• It helps you manage business critical transactions in a timely and efficient manner.
• It provides real-time performance and transaction monitoring, whether your system is designed around service oriented architecture (SOA) or a mixed SOA and enterprise application integration (EAI) environment.
  It protects and assures transaction performance meets standards.
• It uses Complex Event Processing (CEP) so that real-time performance can also be linked with multiple sources of data—revealing unsuspected trends in performance, patterns of behavior in architecture and anomalies that need monitoring.

It’s necessary to manage risk. AutoPilot provides a reliable way to do this. Save time and money, by putting the necessary controls in place. Not only will you be able to monitor what’s really happening with each transaction, you’ll also avoid the cost of fines and penalties for non-compliance.

Read the following white paper, Situational Awareness, to learn more about how AutoPilot’s 360° situational awareness features will mitigate your risk and ensure compliance in today’s business environment.