NETSCOUT
SYSTEMS, INC.
introduced NETSCOUT Smart Edge Monitoring to give IT teams complete visibility
and insights to assure the highest-quality end-user experience in any network
or application regardless of where employees perform their job. By reimagining
service assurance for the hybrid enterprise, NETSCOUT is the first
to introduce an entirely new, patent-pending architecture that combines smart
data analytics with synthetic transaction testing to deliver visibility and
support for the end-user experience, whether working at home, business offices,
or remote locations.
"IT organizations face big decisions in managing and advancing
their networks and management approaches, which became even more urgent, during
the pandemic on multiple fronts - from operations to optimization, from
resolution to readiness, and from core and cloud to edge and client," stated
Mark Leary, research director, network analytics, IDC. "To address the next
normal in network management, ITOps needs to be able to diagnose whether
applications, clients, services, or network infrastructure are causing
performance problems. Here, it is vital to pinpoint and resolve service
degradation issues across any domain rapidly and accurately."
Smart Edge Monitoring overcomes one of IT's biggest
challenges in problem identification and resolution in complex, multi-vendor
environments. Through integrated analysis, the solution quickly understands
what the end-user experience is and exactly why issues are occurring. As a
result, this unique solution drives significant reductions in
time-to-resolution for any application issue, including SaaS, UCaaS, VoIP,
video, and data.
Enterprise organizations all have remote locations
representing an edge in their network - manufacturing, banking, and retail have
factories, branches, and stores - many of which have gaps in visibility when
problems occur. Smart Edge Monitoring closes those gaps with flexible,
cost-effective alternatives to get the proper analysis in the right edge
location for improved end-user experience and problem resolution.
The value of combining the synthetic testing and packet
analysis in Smart Edge Monitoring is that emerging problems are detected as
early as possible, so IT teams can quickly discover the reason why and pinpoint
where they are happening. Although historically, siloed tools might have
provided one or the other analysis, Smart Edge Monitoring merges them with
integrated analysis and logical workflows that dramatically reduce end-user
impact and the time required to solve complex issues. Example use-cases include:
- Unified Communications
as a Service (UCaaS) -
When users at home, branch and remote offices, or headquarters are
experiencing poor performance on platforms such as Webex, Microsoft Teams,
and Zoom, Smart Edge Monitoring identifies problems including join-meeting
delays and poor audio and video quality.
- Work-from-Home -
With a significant percentage of companies operating a hybrid workforce
model, Smart Edge Monitoring provides early detection of performance
slow-downs with analysis throughout the transaction ecosystem, from
home-user network, across the WAN, to data center, application and
database servers, and to cloud and SaaS providers, to quickly pinpoint the
problem.
- Cloud - Cloud migrations
can have gaps in visibility that lead to performance challenges
post-launch. Smart Edge Monitoring baselines the user experience before,
during, and after cut-over to cloud-based applications to help mitigate
such issues.
"The reality is that the massive
shift toward remote work over the past year has exposed fundamental blind
spots," said Michael Szabados, chief operating officer, NETSCOUT. "When
performance problems begin to develop for the remote user, our smart data
transaction tests act much like a smoke detector alerting of a potential problem,
which subsequently can be quickly extinguished with the powerful nGeniusONE
service triage workflows."
Available immediately, Smart Edge Monitoring comprises
nGeniusPULSE nPoints at user locations, including home or remote offices, and
InfiniStreamNG at strategic network, data centers, and cloud locations with
Omnis Cloud Adaptor, providing packet-based analysis on synthetic testing.
These data sources leverage NETSCOUT's patented Adaptive Service Intelligence
(ASI) technology to provide smart data for smarter analytics with nGeniusPULSE
and nGeniusONE Service Assurance platforms.