Avada Software Infrared360 Reviews

Our organization has been using Infrared360 for almost 2 years now. I have been very happy with this product so I decided to post my experiences with it. Our environment consists of z/OS, Linux, AIX and Windows hardware. Our middleware infrastructure consists of Websphere ESB, MQ Series, WAS and numerous web services. Specifically our MQ infrastructure is comprised of clustered multi-instance queue managers and Message Brokers, pub/sub.

When our organization decided to look at other middleware management tools we decided to look at agentless solutions. I have been working with agent based for over 10 years from various vendors and I can sum up my reasons for not wanting them:

Prolonged deployment cycles 

Dependency on the underlying OS.

New release of Agent required to take advantage of new features in middleware software

Agents can introduce another point of failure.

Proprietary solution.

So far the product has exceeded our expectations. We are able to monitor ALL of our middleware (URL,webservices, MQ series) with a single tool. I also like the fact that it is built on open standard components. We use Tomcat as the app server for Infrared360. No licensing costs for Tomcat. Free is good! The product offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to rule creation. We use custom alerts which requires in house java code to be executed. This was a snap with Infrared360.

Deployment is very easy and much less time consuming. This is a BIG plus. What took 4 people one month each can now be done by one person within a week. This was a major factor in our purchasing decision. Our middleware team has a lot more time to focus on the middleware infrastructure instead of testing. From a soft cost perspective we are saving a good deal of money.

The support we have received from Avada has been nothing short of superlative. No matter what problem you are trying to solve they are there every step of the way. This was just as important as the product itself. Best support experience I have ever had.

The only negative is the user interface. It is not hard to learn, but it doesn't have polished visual graphics, no pretty bells and whistles. Not a major shortcoming but definitely an area for improvement. I feel that what it doesn't have in graphics it more than makes up for in functionality.

• We were really impressed with Avada’s sensible approach, and how Infrared360 was architected.
• There was an incredibly low overhead standing IR360 up. It was so easy. Even easier with the standalone version.
• The implementation was simple and easy. Installing the standalone version was even easier, and upgrades are the easiest.
• We found logically segmenting visibility for each line of business streamlines management of middleware and the myriad of applications.
• IR360 removed bottlenecks
• Failures and missed SLA’s have been avoided
• We've reduced operational cost
• We've reduced maintenance cost
• Proactively resolve issues and prevent problems
• With the same people, they could accomplish more
• Users picked up really quickly. Very little training required
• Superb customer service and support. Communication is excellent
• We now need less intervention from Admin side
• Infrared360 is reliable, provided additional functionality and great flexibility
• We've provided granular access control to our Development team
• We were able to use IR360 to run our internal scripts
• With IR360 we can create tiered alerts and push them out in a number or ways, including automate actions