At the Microsoft Management Summit 2006, Quest Software Inc. (Nasdaq: QSFT) announced its entry into the Microsoft .NET application management marketplace through a series of commercial relationships with AVIcode, a privately held firm. The transactions include agreements for product distribution, joint research and development activities and marketing and sales initiatives, and a Quest equity investment in AVIcode, the terms of which are not being disclosed. Separately, Quest today announced additional support for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, including extending its monitoring capabilities across the heterogeneous enterprise to encompass Unix and Linux environments (see related release).

Beginning next quarter, Quest will market and distribute its version of AVIcode’s Intercept Studio and .NET Management Pack (Enterprise Edition) for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. These products will be integrated with Quest’s application management solutions to deliver, manage, and control complex application environments from end user to database.

“Microsoft .NET is the leading application development environment, with more than 44 percent of custom-developed applications being developed in .NET, according to a recent Forrester report1,” said Larry Humphries, vice president, product management, Quest Software.

“Forward-looking independent surveys show that as many as 77 percent of organizations plan to migrate to or build new applications with the .NET platform over the next 12 months. We believe AVIcode’s .NET performance management solutions are the clear leaders because of their superior diagnostic capabilities and AVIcode’s strong relationship with Microsoft. The combination of MOM 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and the AVIcode solutions will help Quest customers ensure the ongoing availability and performance of their critical .NET applications.”

The Quest performance management offering for .NET will provide a consolidated real-time view of .NET production applications, including health status indicators and root cause analysis of connectivity issues, security issues, code failures, and performance degradations. The solution will operate in an always-on state, automatically detecting application errors when they occur while also pinpointing errors down to the line of problem code. The offering will seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 so users can easily pull up problem components in their development environment.

“This collaboration enables us to better deliver monitoring technology to the rapidly expanding .NET marketplace,” said Mike Curreri, CEO of AVIcode. “We are pleased to announce this newest commitment to our technology, and believe it is further evidence of our leadership position in the application monitoring space.”

“Microsoft is pleased to see the development of this relationship between two of our key partners,” said Felicity McGourty, director of Product Management and Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “Together, Quest and AVIcode are extending MOM 2005 even further for monitoring and control of .NET applications, helping customers benefit from a single integrated approach to managing their environments.”