Netuitive announced it has upgraded its business service-management software to allow IT managers to create custom dashboards, prioritize alarms and monitor IT services in real time.

Service Analyzer 2.0 uses Netuitive's self-learning performance-management technology to learn the normal behavior of customer environments and to alert IT when activity strays outside known patterns. Now the software application includes a multiview dashboard that features three roles within any organization: IT infrastructure, client experience and business impact. The dashboards present data collected in context, Netuitive officials say, which will help individuals more quickly assess the information to do their jobs.

Another feature enables IT managers to monitor predefined service-level objectives in concert with real-time performance data to help link IT infrastructure to business goals. IT managers with this version can define alarms to a more detailed level. For instance, the company's trusted-alarms technology lets IT managers categorize alarms based on severity, type, health and availability. And Netuitive added BSM topology views in this release, which the vendor says helps IT managers visualize the relationships among components working together to deliver a service.

"It's forward-looking to base BSM on learning the environment in real time rather than basing it on static policies," says George Hamilton, director of the Yankee Group's enabling technologies enterprise group. "Environments are more dynamic now and with virtualization in the mix that will become more important."

Netuitive says its software taps adapters into existing management platforms to speed product deployment and collects performance data from third-party applications from the likes of BMC, CA, HP and IBM -- all vendors Netuitive considers competition. Service Analyzer can run on managed devices that already have software agents installed on them, or it can collect data from the central management console that network managers use to distribute and configure agents.

Service Analyzer 2.0 is set to be generally available in mid-November, and pricing starts at US$1,000 per server and US$20,000 per service. Netuitive defines a service as composite applications such as online banking or payroll.