SOFTECH/AAXION TO PRODUCE PREDICTIVE SOFTWARE.

SoftTech Solutions and Aaxion Software have formed a partnership to collaborate on a software application to provide hardware fault detection for Sun workstations and servers. The product called the On-Line! Sleuth, reveals potential hardware problems before an event occurs or becomes catastrophic

The Sleuth is a dynamic predictive application that identifies potential hardware failures two to four days in advance. The product picks up where most monitoring tools leave off. This early detection system provides engineers and administrators ample time to make repairs or corrections before costly catastrophic outages can occur

The Sleuth "watches" and classifies fault and error events reported by the operating system, noting the frequency of each occurrence. The product notifies system administrators if and when the trended pattern of observed faults matches those known to precede failure. With this pre-warning, individuals are often able to avert crashes or system failures.

Unlike fault-tolerant systems that literally "tolerate" system failures and continue to operate or notify users when the problem has occurred, the Sleuth's purpose is to avoid outages altogether. This pattern analysis technique assumes that a period of instability exists prior to almost all hardware failures. The Sleuth combines statistics, error logs, and years of actual experience to predict over 95% of all hardware failures before they take place.

The On-Line! Sleuth installs in minutes, requiring less than 10MB of disk space and using less than 1% of runtime resources. The product can be tailored for operational specifics but little to no tuning is necessary to benefit from the product's statistical trend-analysis algorithms. Notifications of any potential problems are sent via email, pager, or SNMP trap to targeted administrators or other appropriate individuals.

The Sleuth combined with the On-Line! Detective for Sun becomes a powerful combination of tools to increase uptime in mission-critical environments. With the average outage cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, predictive and preventive tools like the Sleuth and Detective make sense. Depending on the cost associated with downtime, the Sleuth could pay for itself in just a few minutes.

To receive more information about the On-Line! Sleuth or other SoftTech Solutions products call [phone] or go to SoftTech's website at http://www.sundetective.com.