Absolute Performance announced the availability of System Shepherd Version 5.0, Absolute's flagship SaaS delivered software. System Shepherd 5.0 brings many new innovations to application performance management, including the ability to instrument and manage application software operating in VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and Parallels virtualized environments. System Shepherd 5.0's multi-user, multi-tenant web-based dashboard provides valuable performance, management and SLA operating data required to meet the demands of software-as-a-service and hosted application services.

The 5.0 release of System Shepherd adds the ability to look deep into the virtualization software hypervisor, providing insight into the performance of multiple applications, web servers, databases and operating systems running across a single or multiple virtual machines. System Shepherd quantifies the resource utilization of all the software operating within the virtualized environment, easing performance tuning and resource management of virtualized applications and software. System Shepherd supports VMware ESX hypervisor and will expand support to Parallels, Xen and Hyper-V in the coming months.

"System Shepherd 5.0 is one of the first SaaS-based application management solutions with support for virtual servers," says Julie Craig, SaaS industry thought leader and Senior Analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. "This innovative offering from Absolute Performance adds depth to System Shepherd's performance management capabilities, and positions Absolute Performance very well for anyone delivering highly available On Demand solutions."

"Meeting delivery commitments to SaaS customers is absolutely crucial in the On Demand market," according to Mitchell Ashley, Absolute Performance CTO and Chief Strategist. "Bringing virtualization management, deep application performance management, customer experience measurement, and SLA management, in one integrated view ensures our customers have all the tools needed to deliver on the promise of SaaS, 24x7x365."

System Shepherd 5.0 is the foundation of Absolute's robust suite of On Demand software solutions for managing software performance in software-as-a-service delivered applications, content and enterprise solutions. Version 5.0 brings a fully customizable dashboard based on the flexible, iGoogle-style web-based user interface. Dashboard components, called "gadgets," can be added and customized to instrument virtually any performance or system metric throughout the operating system, hypervisor, network and application software stack. Business metrics can also be integrated into the dashboard providing a rich, in-depth view into any On Demand service or business.

Delivered as On Demand software means there's no complex on-site software to be installed or managed. Everything is configured through System Shepherd's web interface, cutting installation time down to less than a day, even hours, as compared to the weeks, months and sometimes years to install on-premise enterprise management systems.