Collation next week plans to unveil the latest revision of its application resource mapping software, which the company says can now handle larger customer networks and share data across multiple management domains.

Confignia 3.0 is software that helps IT managers map can map the components and interdependencies among the databases, switches, routers, load balancers, Web and application servers that comprise an application environment. The software also records configurations and tracks changes made. The software can automatically discover the IT components and resources an application uses and keep an up-to-date database of those relationships.

"Confignia's automatically generated application maps eliminate the last manual process in generating custom workflows associated with business processes," says Ken Rutsky, vice president of marketing.

Confignia runs on a Solaris server and uses standard protocols such as SNMP, Java Management Extension, HTTP and SQL to query network devices, databases, load balancers, security devices, and Web and application servers for configuration data.

Collation upgraded this release to share data among multiple Confignia servers. For example, one server would monitor an application such as online ordering, and another server could be in use by the same customer to manage a payroll application. In the past, the two databases couldn't share data to compare if, say, the rate of online orders impacts how quickly the payroll application runs, if they share common IT resources.

Now Collation added what it calls Confignia Domain Manager, which is a database that can now be accessed using Confignia APIs and software development kit. This addition enables customers to share data among Collation products as well as with third-party vendor and custom homegrown applications. Rutsky says this data-sharing capability will help customer use Confignia in large enterprise deployments.

"The ability to collect data from multiple management domains will help customers compare data across the entire infrastructure," Rutsky says.

With this release, Collation also added to Confignia support for business applications built on .Net, J2EE, and custom application platforms and running on all major Windows, Unix, and Linux platforms.

Collation also partners with companies such as Compuware and Micromuse, which use its Confignia software to discover application topologies in their respective management products. Collation competes most with Mercury Interactive since its acquisition of Appilog last year, but also runs into products from the likes of mValent, Relicore and Troux Technologies.

Confignia 3.0 is generally available now, and pricing starts at about US$100,000, depending on the customer implementation.