Mercury Announces Mercury Performance Center 8.1

- Unveils Major New Version of Mercury Performance Center



LAS VEGAS, Oct. 10  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today at Mercury World, Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ:MERQE), the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) software, announced Mercury Performance Center(TM) 8.1, a strategic part of Mercury BTO Enterprise(TM). The major new version of Mercury's application delivery optimization center allows customers to automate application load testing and helps verify that applications will meet business performance requirements.

"The quality and performance of mission-critical applications often determines the experience that customers, partners and employees have with an enterprise," said Rajesh Radhakrishnan, vice president of application delivery products at Mercury. "This is a key driver for customers standardizing on Mercury Performance Testing.  The new version of Mercury Performance Center will help our customers take a closed-loop approach to application performance and help mitigate the business risk of application failure."

Mercury also announced the new Mercury Center Management offering as part of Mercury Performance Center 8.1 to help customers establish and manage a performance center of excellence. Developed on the Mercury IT Governance Center(TM) platform, this offering helps deliver an out-of-the box demand, project and resource management solution for running a performance testing center. This offering is preconfigured with templates for managing performance testing and leverages best practices developed through Mercury Managed Services(TM).

Mercury Performance Center 8.1 is comprised of a new and enhanced set of Mercury application modules, a real-time dashboard and an enterprise foundation. The software modules in Mercury Performance Center include Mercury LoadRunner(R), Mercury Diagnostics(TM), Mercury Tuning(TM), Mercury Capacity Planning(TM), and Mercury Center Management(TM).

  New features and enhancements in Mercury Performance Center 8.1 include:

  - New integrated diagnostics capabilities for J2EE, .NET, Siebel, Oracle,
    and SAP applications helps improve mean time to resolution for
    performance problems;
  - Coverage for new protocols and environments including ADO .Net and
    enhanced capabilities for existing environments such as Citrix and Web
    Services;
  - Improved ease-of-use in scripting load tests by providing a step-by-step
    tool bar to help guide new users through the scripting process, and
    automate the process of recording, replaying, correlating, and adding
    transactions and verifications.  The new thumbnail testing views provide
    a visual guide on the process of recording and replaying; and
  - Integration with the Mercury Business Availability Center(TM) allows
    scripts in Mercury LoadRunner and Mercury Performance Center to be
    directly exported to Mercury Business Availability Center.



"Under-performing applications can create significant risk to the business, as many of the most important functions of the business are now automated in custom and packaged applications," said Theresa Lanowitz, research director at Gartner, Inc. "Performance testing is at the heart of establishing a lifecycle approach to ensuring applications perform and deliver the right business results."

Mercury Performance Center 8.1 is available today and is delivered as an in-house deployment or through Mercury Managed Services. For more information, please visit http://www.mercury.com/us/products/performance-center/

For the past 15 years, Mercury has helped thousands of customers optimize application quality and performance. According to IDC, Mercury is the uncontested leader in application delivery with more than 58 percent market share, nearly three times that of any other vendor (1).

Mercury BTO Enterprise

Mercury BTO Enterprise is the industry's first integrated suite of business technology optimization (BTO) offerings designed to help customers optimize the business outcomes of IT. Mercury BTO Enterprise is comprised of new application change and performance lifecycle offerings as well as major new versions of Mercury IT Governance Center(TM), Mercury Quality Center(TM), Mercury Performance Center(TM), and Mercury Business Availability Center(TM).

ABOUT MERCURY

Mercury Interactive Corporation (NASDAQ:MERQE), the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) software, is committed to helping customers optimize the business value of information technology. Founded in 1989, Mercury conducts business worldwide and is one of the largest enterprise software companies today. Mercury provides software and services for IT Governance, Application Delivery, and Application Management. Customers worldwide rely on Mercury offerings to govern the priorities, processes and people of IT and test and manage the quality and performance of business- critical applications. Mercury BTO offerings are complemented by technologies and services from global business partners. For more information, please visit http://www.mercury.com/.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Mercury's future product and service offerings. Mercury's actual product and service plans and results may differ materially from the forward- looking statements made by, or on behalf of, Mercury. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among other things: 1) the timing of the availability of Mercury products, services, product enhancements and service enhancements; 2) the failure of Mercury products, services, product enhancements and service enhancements to meet customers' expectations, needs or perform as described; 3) the dependence of Mercury's financial growth on the continued success and acceptance of its existing and new software products and services, and the success of its BTO strategy; 4) the ability to increase sales through our direct and indirect channels, as well as international sales; 5) intense competition for Mercury's products and services; and 6) the additional risks and important factors described in Mercury's SEC reports, including the Annual Report to Stockholders on Form 10-K for fiscal year ended March 31, 2005, and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2004, which are available at the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov/. All of the information in this press release is made as of the date of this press release, and Mercury undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

Mercury, Mercury BTO Enterprise, Mercury Performance Center, Mercury LoadRunner, Mercury Diagnostics, Mercury Tuning, Mercury Capacity Planning, Mercury Center Management, Mercury IT Governance Center, Mercury Managed Services, Mercury Quality Center, Mercury Business Availability Center and the Mercury logo are trademarks of Mercury Interactive Corporation and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.

All other company, brand and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

(1) IDC Worldwide Distributed Automated Software Quality Tools 2005-2009

Forecast and 2004 Vendor Shares, July 26, 2005 ID 33771 

DATASOURCE: Mercury Interactive Corporation



CONTACT:  Robin Stoecker, [phone], ; or

Heather Sieberg, [phone], , both of Mercury 



Web site:  http://www.mercury.com/

http://www.mercuryinteractive.com/

http://www.mercury.com/us/products/performance-center 

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