Precise Gets Specific on Performance Management

Company: Software

Headquarters: Redwood Shores, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Precise Transaction Performance Management (TPM)

Year Founded: 2008

Number of Channel Partners: 60 worldwide, including 12 in the U.S.

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: Spun out from security firm Symantec last year, Precise Software Solutions is an experienced company with startup-style ambition to woo the IT industry with its suite of transaction performance management software tools.

The Lowdown: In a time of economic uncertainty, there's a catch phrase you just can't avoid -- "Do more with less." Nice idea, but it usually involves spending a bunch of money up front on next-gen technology that promises to pay for itself somewhere down the road.

Precise Software Solutions has a more realistic proposition -- "Do more with the same."

The software vendor "solves a very big problem for IT" with its transaction performance management tools, the Precise TPM suite of software products, says executive vice president Zohar Gilad.

"By and large, getting better value out of your existing assets is a problem that's never been fully solved, and it's only getting more complex," says Gilad. "So why now? Look at the car industry: people are not buying new cars. People are trying to keep their old cars running. We help IT optimize the cost and performance of their existing infrastructure and applications. "Business transactions are the ultimate client of IT runs at cost. What a CIO needs to do is optimize for business service performance while at the same time optimizing for low-cost IT. We're in business to solve this problem."

The vendor's current release, Precise TPM 8.5, takes a three-level approach to optimizing IT transactions, according to Gilad. The software tracks transactions from their origin through the application tier and then to the system-of-record and into storage. Next, the time spent by the transaction in each of those tiers is tracked. Finally, the Precise TPM engine identifies problem areas and suggests corrective action.

It's a fairly simple solution for finding efficiencies in the nooks and crannies that few enterprise IT shops have the capacity to uncover. And Gilad thinks Precise TPM is particularly well-suited for a market that is desperate to get more efficient without committing big-time cash up front.

"We are seeing a lot of demand, because a lot of our partners understand that IT is just not going to be buying new stuff this year, or maybe even next year. So they obviously are looking for anything that is going to be in demand right now," he said.

Precise, while only technically in business since 2008, has a good reputation and, with 2,000 or so technology partners, definitely has a solid place in the enterprise software ecosystem. That's because the company has actually been around since the early 1990s, having been originally acquired by Veritas and then brought into the Symantec stable when the security vendor merged with Veritas in 2004.

Gilad said reseller partners in the U.S. and throughout the world are generally incorporating license sales of Precise TPM into their broader service offerings. But an increasing number of partners are also offering outsourced management of the product as a recurring-revenue managed service, he said.