You don't see many new companies launching computer network appliances in this climate. But ExtraHop, a Seattle startup backed by Madrona Venture Group and led by former F5 networks, is taking the leap.

Today, the 10-person company is introducing network management tools that help IT professionals gather more information about the applications they are distributing. Among other things, the tool is designed to pinpoint performance problems and errors as well as predict network congestion based on past patterns. The tool also includes analytics so IT shops can measure the effectiveness of their products.

ExtraHop is led by Raja Mukerji and Jesse Rothstein, who previously worked on F5's Big IP product.

"For almost every organization today, applications and networks are the lifeblood of the business. While these technologies have seen tremendous advancements in the last few years, the products that monitor them have not kept up," said Chief Executive Rothstein. "In this hyper-distributed, virtualized world, most IT organizations continue to struggle with tools that are inadequate for today's troubleshooting, performance-tuning, and capacity-planning needs."

Founded last year, ExtraHop has raised $1.5 million.

More on ExtraHop from GigaOm, which notes that Redmond-based Concur has been using the technology to identify possible network problems.