NetScout Improves Network And Application Analysis And Monitoring

Building on the real-time data mining capabilities of the Adaptive Session Intelligence (ASI) technology that it announced in November of last year, NetScout Systems has rolled out nGenius Enterprise Intelligence. nGenius Enterprise Intelligence is the first module built on the ASI technology, which is intended to provide service-level analysis on an end-to-end session basis of network communication.

The software has three major functions: prediction, triage and diagnosis, and it can monitor both the network and the applications that run on top of it. The nGenius Enterprise Intelligence product is part of NetScout's Unified Service Delivery Management framework and is an integrated module with the company's nGenius Service Assurance Solution.

"I see Netscout's announcement as the next logical, and necessary, evolution of the network and performance management space," says Rohit Mehra, director, enterprise communications infrastructure, at International Data Corp., a Framingham, Mass., consultancy. "Managing the physical IT infrastructure and applications is good, but taking that to the next level with service delivery management is better, and provides a comprehensive view of the network, IT and service infrastructure. Adding network intelligence is going to be key as enterprises adopt varying degrees of private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructures, and the need to support multiple business needs and applications continues to increase. From that standpoint, the end-to-end service session analysis available with nGenius Enterprise Intelligence will help provide insight into all application tiers, and also provide visibility into how the network, applications and service components interact with each other."

An example of how the nGenius Enterprise Intelligence product could be used is in analyzing the recent Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) outage, says Steven Shalita, VP of marketing for NetScout. Because the software is capable of monitoring both networks and applications, it can help organizations move from an application-oriented model to a service-oriented model, because many organizations still work in "silos" by looking at things that happen on the web but not between a company's multiple data centers, he says.

The software can create session representation in real time and is linked to the top-level data, making it easier to help perform root-cause analysis. Previously, users had to go through multiple processes in order to drill down on data, Shalita says.The purpose of the software is to determine the interdependencies and interrelationships among an organization's application, network, and service components that can end up degrading system performance, the company says. For example, the software monitors physical elements such as servers, links and devices, but also elements of an application and calls between applications.

The underlying ASI technology also has the ability to enable the user to see things across multiple domains. The software is in early field trials now and is expected to begin shipping in July, Shalita says.

The company is also expecting to demonstrate the software at Interop in Las Vegas this month. Existing NetScout users can add the new functionality for about $75,000 per console; new users would also need to purchase additional NetScout infrastructure to support the product.

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