The GroundWork Open Source firm has upgraded its network monitoring suite to version 6.0. Next to an Enterprise subscription edition it also provides, as before, its free Community edition.

GroundWork Open Source completely overhauled the monitoring application's web interface based on JBoss Portal. A notable addition is the GWSeuratView, named after the artist Georges Seurat the Pointillist, where the whole environment appears tiny host symbols to help in discerning emergent patterns. The JBoss underpinning enables a particularly well-customizable user interface with detailed authentication, authorization and access controls, according to the product data sheets.

The 6.0 release is accompanied by an updated SDK, the Groundwork Developer's Kit (GDK). Next to the Community edition of the monitoring software it includes the Eclipse IDE and Maven 1.1 and Ant 1.7.1 build tools. A developer and end-user wiki provides details how to extend the monitor platform by using the GDK.

The new GroundWork Monitor user interface provides a view of monitored devices composed of tiny icons, along the lines of Pointillist artist Georges Seurat.

GroundWork Monitor combines multiple open source software into a monitoring solution, from Nagios and Cacti to Nmap and RRDtool. A product licensing webpage gives an overview of the components used and their licenses.

Version 6.0 is available free as the GroundWork Monitoring Community Edition. A family comparison webpage shows a feature matrix of the Community, Starter and Enterprise editions. The dashboard builder and service level agreements (SLAs) are reserved for paying customers. The Starter edition, with 100 monitored devices, begins the pricing at a $4,000 annual subscription.

The GroundWork Open Source firm has upgraded its network monitoring suite to version 6.0. Next to an Enterprise subscription edition it also provides, as before, its free Community edition.