NetScout Unifies IT Performance Management

Within any IT organization, there is a lot that can go wrong. What’s never really clear is what’s going wrong at any given time.

To help IT organizations specifically address that issue, NetScout Systems today launched nGeniusONE, a unified performance management tool that leverages deep packet inspection technology to provide actionable intelligence across the network, server, applications and even specific IT services.

According to Steve Shalita, vice president of marketing for NetScout, nGeniusONE is an incarnation of the convergence of network and application performance management. More than ever, IT service performance is determined by issues arising from the interplay of multiple devices that make up an application stack. While there are plenty of tools for managing each component of the stack, managing each component in isolation is not only expensive, it usually doesn’t provide much context in terms of how one device may be affecting the performance of another. This may ultimately have a detrimental effect on the application.

Shalita says nGeniusONE is a more comprehensive approach to IT performance management in real time that will ultimately supersede the company’s nGenius Service Assuarance offering, which leverages the company’s expertise with network taps and deep packet inspection to identify network performance issues.

Longer term, the issue that IT organizations are soon going to contend with is actually the way they are organized. Instead of being built around silos of technologies, they need to build cross-discipline operational teams that are responsible for specific applications and services.

Otherwise, Shalita notes that the average IT organization simply winds up wasting too much time because each fiefdom is defending the honor of its particular domain.

It’s not clear how long it will take for this transformation to come about. But those organizations that can identify and remediate IT problems faster than others over time build a sustainable edge, not to mention a better reputation across the business.

Unfortunately, either because of rivalries within the IT organization or the simple fact that IT people are not being compensated based on resolution rather than actual device uptime, many IT organizations wind up becoming dysfunctional.

Of course, no tool is going to solve those issues overnight. But the one thing that is for certain is the faster the source of a particular problem is identified, the faster the source of that problem is resolved.