Validating Cloud Connections for Enhanced Connected Experiences

The world relies on the cloud which means that organizations are fundamentally reliant on third-party networks to access these critical cloud resources. While cloud adoption decisions are largely made by executive teams, the responsibility of performance and availability falls squarely on the shoulders of network operations teams.

The visibility gaps posed by the cloud services their organizations have adopted. This lack of visibility results in wasted time and resources. Teams spend significant time trying to resolve application and network performance issues. Lengthy troubleshooting prevents network operations teams from spending time on more valuable strategic initiatives. Ultimately, this lack of visibility presents increased risk to the business.

To overcome these challenges, teams need to invest in a solution that provides a few key capabilities.

1. Deliver end-to-end visibility across both internal and externally managed networks

Teams need evolved tools. Traditional passive monitoring tools need to be augmented with active monitoring capabilities. It is only with these combined capabilities that teams can gain the true, end-to-end insight required to map where traffic is going and determine where the root cause of performance bottlenecks is located. Cloud migration and adoption transformations present unique challenges for today’s network operations teams.

To overcome these challenges, teams must establish a more modern approach. AppNeta’s TruPath technology provides this insight by using a method called Packet Train Dispersion. This method of sending lightweight trains over various protocols to measure the response of networks to both data and voice packet trains provides continuous insight into end-to-end network performance. By automatically escalating issues when they persist, TruPath’s diagnostics can pinpoint exactly where the root cause of the problem is.

2. Add application context to network insights

Network operations teams can no longer simply rely upon the basic network data of the past. As applications become more diversified and users become more mobile, it is more critical than ever that teams understand the nuanced business context of complex applications. From another angle, users and support tickets will start by naming the slow application, but it’s IT and network operations teams’ job to identify the root cause.

There are two requirements that need to be addressed. Network operations teams have to know what apps are traversing the network and understand which ones are critical to the business. This can be done by looking at network traffic through techniques like Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) for internal networks and office environments.

Once apps are identified, network operations teams can create active testing to those apps to understand the network delivery paths between apps and users. The primary way to achieve this is through synthetic transaction monitoring.  

3. Track SLAs for networks and services

With most modern apps and third-party networks, SLAs are no longer guaranteed. Therefore, when performance issues arise in external service provider environments, network operations teams need objective data to prove that. When outages occur, users contact support, teams issue communications about the outage internally, and start troubleshooting. Typically, in cloud and hybrid environments, there is a lot of finger pointing between application and network infrastructure teams when issues occur.

With active monitoring of any SaaS or web service, network operations teams can keep track of performance and report on SLAs by watching derivatives of performance. Much like financial markets pay attention to the rates of change, network operations teams benefit from looking beyond the trees to see the forest on a macro level.

Once a team moves from reactive to proactive approaches, understanding the frequency and timing of aberrations represents the next phase of evolution. This will yield insights that help teams combat endemic issues that traditional monitoring may not uncover.

Pulling it all together

With Broadcom, network operations teams can enhance connected experiences for any user and any application, no matter who owns the network infrastructure. When issues arise and war room meetings are convened, network operations teams need to determine if their network infrastructure is to blame, and, if not, provide evidence that their environments are not the culprit. Gaps in visibility or data make this task impossible. By identifying where the gaps are, teams can be better prepared to pinpoint the location of issues and demonstrate innocence.

Every day, Broadcom helps organizations to enhance connected experiences. Explore these ways in more depth by reading our complimentary white paper.