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                                                                    Exhibit 99.1

                      CONCORD AND FIRSTSENSE AGREE TO MERGE

  FIRSTSENSE TO DRAMATICALLY EXTEND EHEALTH'S APPLICATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
  CAPABILITIES

         MARLBORO, MASS. - JAN 20, 2000 -Concord Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq:
CCRD) and FirstSense Software, today announced the signing of a definitive
agreement pursuant to which FirstSense plans to merge with a subsidiary of
Concord. FirstSense, a privately held company based in Burlington, MA, is a
premier provider of application and service response management solutions.
Concord is the market leader in next-generation performance management solutions
that ensure effective e-business performance for service providers and
enterprise organizations.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, Concord will acquire all of the
outstanding stock of FirstSense, and assume all of its outstanding options, in
exchange for 1,940,000 shares of Concord common stock. The closing sale price
for Concord's common stock on NASDAQ on January 19th, 2000 was $53.81 per share.
This transaction, approved by the boards of directors of both Concord and
FirstSense, is expected to be accounted for as a pooling of interest. This
transaction is expected to close in February, subject to a number of customary
closing conditions.

"FirstSense has tremendously talented people and superior solutions. We're
excited to make them part of the Concord team," said Jack Blaeser, president and
CEO of Concord. "FirstSense is an ideal fit in terms of culture, people and
technology. The exploding e-business market offers infinite opportunity for the
vendor with the right solution. FirstSense will allow us to further increase the
value of our eHealth solution to service providers and e-businesses by ensuring
the high availability and performance of applications and services. With the
addition of FirstSense, we have the winning combination of expertise and
solutions to define and dominate e-business performance management."

The merger with FirstSense, combined with the recent merger with Empire
Technologies, gives Concord the only comprehensive, integrated solution for
end-to-end e-business management. Unlike traditional performance management
solutions which present businesses with fragmented information on the
performance of their critical e-systems, Concord's eHealth solution family
offers a common interface and reporting structure for managing across
applications, systems, services and networks. Maximizing the interconnections
between these four key areas gives today's companies and service providers the
competitive advantage they need to run a successful e-business.

"We are elated about the merger and the opportunity to take advantage of the
resources, influence and technology leadership that Concord offers. We have a
long and successful history of working with Concord as an OEM partner. This plan
to merge is the natural and mutually beneficial extension of that relationship,"
said Bob Cramer, president and CEO of FirstSense. "This move recognizes the
strong and complementary solutions, talent and culture that Concord and
FirstSense share. We're looking forward to a smooth integration and the
tremendous success that we're certain will result from this merger."

Concord's recently launched eHealth solution family is a comprehensive and
intuitive set of best-in-breed performance management solutions. These
solutions, tied together by a common console and interface, map to the key
performance areas for effective e-business, resulting in a powerful end-to-end
performance management solution for today's service providers and corporations.
The eHealth solution family includes Application Health, System Health Service
Health and Network Health. As part of


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Service Health, the industry's most comprehensive solution for service and
application response management, FirstSense allows ASPs and e-businesses to
manage the performance of actual user transactions in business-critical
commercial software packages, as well as custom-developed Windows and Web-based
applications.

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About FirstSense Software, Inc. FirstSense Software is a leading provider of
applications performance and service-level management software designed for
distributed applications, including packaged, custom and e-business
applications. The company's flagship product, FirstSense Enterprise,
continuously monitors application performance and availability from the end-user
perspective. FirstSense arms IT organizations with the information necessary for
application service-level reporting, trend-lining and analysis. By shifting from
infrastructure monitoring to understanding the application service levels
delivered to end users, IT can more directly align its operations with business
unit objectives.

About Concord Communications Concord Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: CCRD) is the
market leader in next-generation performance management solutions. With its
eHealth solution set, Concord offers the only integrated performance management
solution spanning systems, applications, services and networks. Only by
successfully managing performance across all of these key areas can
organizations truly ensure effective e-business. This end-to-end performance
view provides the critical insights needed to power day-to-day business and
e-commerce operations for some of today's most successful corporations and
service providers worldwide. Concord is headquartered in Marlboro,
Massachusetts. For more information on Concord, call 1-800-851-8725 or visit
Concord's World Wide Web site at http://www.concord.com.

Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical
facts may constitute forward looking statements as that term is defined in the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward looking statements
contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number
of risks and uncertainties.

The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from
current expectations include the following: the failure of FirstSense or Concord
to satisfy any of the closing conditions in the definitive merger agreement or
for Concord to otherwise fail to complete the merger; fluctuations in customer
demand; the Company's ability to manage its growth; the risk of new product
introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological
change which characterizes the Company's markets; the risks associated with
competition; the risks associated with international sales as the Company
expands its markets; and the ability of the Company to compete successfully in
the future, risks associated with the Year 2000 problem and the potential delay
of customer purchasing decisions, as well as other risks identified in the
Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited
to those appearing under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's year-end
December 31, 1998 10-K filed with the SEC on March 25, 1999.