VIAVI Solutions Inc. (VIAVI) unveiled significant updates to the Observer Platform, further enhancing the comprehensive network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) solution. Observer 18.3 helps network operations (NetOps) teams maintain peak performance of all IT services, despite the growing work from anywhere (WFX) trend.

As IT teams struggle to handle the explosion in remote work, they are confronting critical challenges that extend beyond network visibility and remote troubleshooting. Difficulty in capacity planning and demand management can lead to increased performance issues due to lack of available resources as well as network constraints caused by unplanned traffic. Proactive capacity planning doesn't just depend on how much network data is available, but how that data is represented. Too much raw data that is not properly visualized, such as a month-long trending view of WAN utilization, ends up hiding critical information about when and where traffic spikes occur.

Two solutions within the Observer Platform have been enhanced to address these challenges and more. Observer GigaFlow now delivers new intuitive, color-coded capacity planning reports that present usage and utilization insights in a format that is easy to interpret, simplifying proactive assessments for strategic WAN spending decisions, while enabling reactive resolution of capacity-related issues. Plus, NetOps can quickly gain insight into which applications are causing peak capacity usage to discern between critical work-related traffic and non-business apps, such as Facebook.

Also included is a new Observer Apex Enterprise appliance with higher scale capacity and software optimizations for faster user interface render time at larger ingest rates. Apex Enterprise builds on the popular Apex performance management solution that leverages End-User Experience Scoring and advanced threat intelligence to deliver unified, comprehensive visibility into IT resource health and status.

Key Enhancements

• GigaFlow Workflows and Reports
• Device and site-based workflows with improved capacity reporting for WAN links, and alarms based on traffic volume.
• Apex Enterprise Appliance
• Larger hardware appliance and software optimizations enable increased scalability, reducing end-user performance issues and trouble tickets.
• Server 2016 Support
• Support for Windows 2016 deployments for Apex, GigaFlow, GigaStor and Observer Management Server.
  

"Most IT teams are caught in a never-ending cycle of firefighting, reacting to performance issues and fighting to secure the necessary resources. Proactive capacity planning and demand management can resolve many of these headaches," said Charles Thompson, Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise and Cloud, VIAVI. "The enhanced Observer Platform takes on network capacity challenges to simplify the strategic allocation of WAN bandwidth, and eases the burden of managing performance issues, no matter where and when remote workers are accessing the network."