Visio Net Center Shows Service Challenge

Visio Enterprise Network Tools (VENT), a US$500 add-in to Visio Professional 2002, has been discontinued. However, some features will be included in future Visio and network management products, and VENT’s associated Visio Network Center Web site will remain live. The cancellation raises some doubts about market acceptance of fee-based Web services associated with Microsoft’s business productivity applications, an approach that Microsoft might be considering for future versions of Office.

Lack of Customer Interest

Conceived as a low-cost network discovery and diagramming tool, VENT included network equipment shapes for physical network diagrams (which show port-by-port wiring of networks); templates for large networks, such as campuses, enterprises, and rackmount systems; an autodiscovery template that could automatically detect and diagram certain network devices; and a one-year subscription to the Visio Network Center (VNC), a Web site from which customers could download new equipment shapes and network-related Visio templates.