Agilent Technologies Patents Powerful, Easy-to-Use Capability of Firehunter Internet Service Assurance Solution.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2001

Firehunter Service Model Brings Structure and

Intelligence to Data, Eliminates Unnecessary Measurements

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that it has been issued a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office relating to aspects of its Firehunter service model, the concept that underlies the considerable power and simplicity of the Firehunter Internet service assurance solution.

The service model helps users to determine which measurements are needed when monitoring Internet services. It also enables users to easily identify which services and customers are affected by network problems. In addition, users can determine which network elements are responsible for service degradation or customer complaints.

Firehunter's service model is a tree-structured graphical representation of critical hierarchical relations in otherwise disparate data. The hierarchy reflects the dependency relations between system components, subcomponents, services and customers, and allows system operators to quickly troubleshoot problems.

For example, Firehunter measurements might indicate, at one level of the graphical tree, that a specific computer is overloaded. By visually tracking up the tree, a user can determine that this computer is a Web server for certain services, that the services have degraded, and that specific customers have been affected. In reverse, a customer representative for an e-business might report that certain services have slowed and certain customers have been affected. The operator can track down the tree to locate the source of the problem. The process need not be manual: higher level nodes in the tree reflect the health of subordinate components, and users can simply click on an event when a threshold is crossed, and Firehunter will automatically take them to the relevant point in the tree.

"In the past, monitoring systems would collect huge amounts of measurements in a flat structure that did not indicate the dependency of some pieces of data on others," said Mark Smith, Firehunter's chief architect and service model inventor. "At best, systems operators carried that critical information in their heads. Firehunter's service model makes the information explicit and eliminates measurements that are irrelevant to specific services. The beauty of the idea is in its simplicity. It organizes the dependency relations into an intelligent structure that can be grasped simply by looking, allowing users to quickly and accurately determine the source of problems."

Since the service model is not hard coded, it can be easily customized on a customer's premises to fit a specific service environment and to accommodate new kinds of services and technology.

About Agilent Firehunter

The Firehunter family of service-assurance solutions for e-businesses provides vital functionality for proactively managing the performance and availability of business-critical services. Firehunter supports service-level monitoring and reporting in addition to service-level agreement (SLA) management, resulting in assured, verified service levels for optimal quality of service and customer satisfaction. These powerful capabilities enable service providers to troubleshoot rapidly, improve operational efficiency and enhance business planning.

For more information, visit www.firehunter.com.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and healthcare. With 48,000 employees serving customers in more than 120 countries, Agilent had net revenue of $10.8 billion in fiscal year 2000. Information about Agilent can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com.