Akorri announced BalancePoint 2.0 with significant new features including: GuidePoint Performance Index, Scorecard Reporting, and Storage Virtualization Support. BalancePoint 2.0 is now available as a virtual appliance for quick, easy, cost-effective deployment, and streamlined support.

• The GuidePoint Performance Index (PI) is a performance metric that ensures server and storage infrastructure is optimally matched to the application's workload requirements. The Performance Index provides IT with a mathematical, key performance indicator enabling them to make justified decisions to initiate IT optimization projects or make IT purchase decisions. Automatically and dynamically determined, a PI index of 100 means that the assigned IT resources (servers, storage, etc.) are optimally matched to the underlying infrastructure. A PI greater than 100 indicates that the assigned IT resources are over-utilized and performance is poor.  A PI significantly less than 100 illustrates under-utilized and IT management should consider efficiency initiatives such as server consolidation or storage tiering.
  
• Scorecard Reporting provides key performance and utilization information for ESX and VMs, physical servers, application service, and storage usage.
• Storage virtualization support for IBM SVC and HDS UVM makes BalancePoint the first and only cross-domain performance management solution to support both virtualized servers and virtualized storage.
• BalancePoint 2.0 is now delivered as a virtual appliance eliminating the complexity typically found with traditional software installations. The virtual appliance is a pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run application packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine.

"Companies are increasingly making strategic architecture decisions to run business critical applications on virtual infrastructure," said Stephen Elliot, Research Director at IDC. "To enable a smooth transition, it becomes crucial they understand how data center infrastructure is affected in key areas such as server and storage resource utilization, technology and business KPI impact, and deep visibility and analysis into performance data. These are key management factors that increase ROI and decrease the risk of application failure."

"Virtualization requires a new management paradigm," said Tom Joyce, President and CEO at Akorri. "Akorri BalancePoint enables business service management by managing across silos and offering IT a way to define and measure service quality across technology types."