Resolving the IT Blame Game

Finding that bottleneck in wide area networks is especially important because of the inherent bandwidth limitations involved.

That’s the primary reason that Riverbed Technology acquired Mazu Networks, which now delivers network performance management tools under the brand name Cascade as a division of Riverbed.

But while there are any number of tools for analyzing network performance, Paul Brady, vice president and general manager for the Cascade business unit, says what distinguishes Cascade is that it provides visibility into networks in a way the rest of the enterprise can comprehend.

The problem that most enterprise organizations are starting to encounter is that more applications are latency sensitive than ever. But all the reports that network managers receive today are presented in ways that only they can understand.

Cascade, in contrast, provides, for example, heat maps that make it easy to visually pinpoint issues on the network so application developers can easily see why a particular application may not be performing the way they think it should.

There’s a lot of time wasted in the enterprise arguing over who is responsible for what in performance issues. What Cascade seems to be trying to do is put an end to the IT blame game in a way everybody can understand.