2016 Trends: Preparing the Network for Web-Scale Demands
Keeping track of what’s occurring in any given IT environment has never been more challenging. On one hand, there is a wide array of cloud applications that need to be monitored. On the other are a number of endpoints that may not even belong to the organization.
To help with that challenge, ThousandEyes has added an endpoint agent to its portfolio of networking monitoring tools that makes it possible for IT organizations to discover the network environment an endpoint is attached to and then ultimately determine the source of any potential problem.
Nick Kephart, senior director of product marketing for ThousandEyes, says ThousandEyes Endpoint Agent software is designed to work with applications that run in a browser. More often than not, Kephart says, end users are trying to access a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application over an unknown network. ThousandEyes Endpoint Agent software makes it possible for the IT organization to discover, for example, the strength of the wireless network connection to be used or the attributes of the virtual private network (VPN) being employed.
In the future, Kephart says, ThousandEyes will extend its network monitoring software to include agent software that be deployed on a thick client, as well as ways to monitor smartphones and other types of devices without using any agent software.
‘We’ll be focusing in the iPhone in the future,” says Kephart.
In the meantime, ThousandEyes Endpoint Agent software is a complement to the cloud application monitoring software that ThousandEyes built on top of Cyclops network auditing software developed by the University of California at Los Angeles.
Most IT organizations today are often flying blind in a world where end users routinely access cloud applications using multiple networks while outside the office. Performance of individual cloud applications can vary substantially across various wide area networks (WAN). Every hotel or café also has a different wireless network. Figuring out what might be impeding the performance of any application is impossible without access to the underlying network. The good news is that whatever the application issue at hand may be, it can now take less time to discover the problem than to fix it. In most IT environments today, that’s usually not the case.
