Network Instruments and NetQoS are developing a unified network monitoring solution that will allow administrators to drill down on retrospective network events and perform root cause analysis on problems that have occurred up to 10 days previously on average.

NetQoS is currently doing nothing more than selling its own application performance tool SuperAgent in tandem with Network Instruments GigaStor network analysis product. But the two companies are developing a single product that will give administrators access to GigaStor functions from the SuperAgent interface, due to ship in the first half of 2007, spokespeople said.

SuperAgent identifies the source and time of network performance issues, while GigaStor provides the detailed packet level analysis of the incident.

"We've found a lot of customers are interested in a retrospective analysis solution that lets them look back 10 days and drill down to any event on network, even an application event. They don't want to have two products to install and manage because they can never be sure if the data from one fits with the data of another," commented Ian Cummins, European sales director for Network Instruments.

"Data that normally sits on spanner and tap will now be taken from GigaStor as if it were on spanner and tap. This level of integration, which is able to seamlessly flow information between the two worlds, is not available today," added Nathan Bragaw, product manager for NetQoS.