Service - NetScout

1 

Assuring the User 

Experience Across the 

Borderless Enterprise 

The Transformation to 

Service Delivery Management 

July, 2011 

Assuring the User Experience for Borderless Networks | NetScout | July, 2011 | NetScout Public | © 2011 NetScout Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

2 

IT Operations Under Increasing Pressure 

Optimize Service 

Delivery 

• Optimize service 

delivery performance 

• Better leverage existing 

Infrastructure 

• Deploy and support new 

applications 

• Minimize need for 

infrastructure upgrades 

Deliver Always-On 

Services 

• Optimal user experience 

• Always-on expectations 

• Business service 

continuity 

• Cyberthreat Awareness 

• Policy & compliance 

Reduce Complexity 

Improve Efficiency 

• Simplify managing 

service delivery 

• Operational consistency 

with reduce costs 

• Better IT team 

collaboration 

• Consolidate & simplify 


3 

NetForecast Best Practices Study 

NetForecast's APM Best Practices Benchmarking Survey Definitively 

Shows That Good APM Processes Deliver Results… 

Source: NetForecast Survey of 364 IT managers – Published June 2011 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/appview 


4 

The Value of Best Practices 

Enterprises With a Benchmark Score Above 6 Really Do Deliver 

Better Performance for Their Users – 75% Better Performance 

Source: June, 2011 NetForecast Survey of 364 IT managers – 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/appview 

• Experience 75% fewer 

critical application problems 

• 75% more likely to learn 

about performance problems 

proactively rather than 

reactively by users calling 

the help desk 

• Typically spend 4 hours to 

resolve performance 

problems, compared to 16 

hours for their low-scoring 

counterparts 


5 

Simplifying The Tool Universe 

Improves Outcomes… 

• Scores improve with the 

number of vendors 

deployed up to three 

• Among the very highest 

performing enterprises the 

vendor count dips 

precipitously 

• The highest-performing 

enterprises get good results 

with fewer vendors because 

they have very effective 

APM processes 

“To ensure optimal performance you need two tools – one for monitoring infrastructure 

performance and another for monitoring application performance. The resulting 

stereoscopic view ensures that you are able to solve more problems faster.” 

Source: June, 2011 NetForecast Survey of 364 IT managers – http://www.networkworld.com/community/appview 


6 

Which Vendors Ranked as Most Used? 

“71% of the topperforming 

enterprises 

use NetScout's 

performance 

management tools.” 

NetForecast – 

June, 2011 

NetForecast's APM 

benchmarking survey 

results show that 

NetScout is the 

vendor most 

frequently used by the 

top-performing group. 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/top-five-apm-vendors-performance-results 

Probability that Enterprises in 

Top Group Use This Vendor 

Vendor Prob. 

AppDynamics 0.47 

ASG Software 0.38 

BMC Software 0.65 

CA Tech 0.40 

Compuware 0.36 

HP SW & Solutions 0.47 

IBM Tivoli 0.42 

InfoVista 0.43 

Ipswich 0.20 

NetIQ 0.62 

NetQoS (CA) 0.57 

NetScout 0.71 

Open Source 0.41 

Quest Software 0.50 

Riverbed Cascade 0.36 

Visual Net Sys 0.33 


7 

Service Management Challenges 

No Problem 

Prediction 

Unable to identify 

problems before 

users impacted 

• Ineffective insight into 

emerging performance 

problems and security risks 

• Users’ calls to help desk 

triggers reaction 

• Lack of unified end-to-end 

visibility of business services 

and service levels 

No Effective 

Triage 

50% to 60% 

resources wasted 

chasing problems 

• Common “rule-out” practices 

for incidents means too many 

IT staff are consumed to solve 

problems 

• Difficult to identify root cause 

across service domains 

• Support people are too busy 

putting out fires 

No Effective 

Diagnosis 

Performance 

problem diagnosis 

can take days 

• Organization misaligned to 

support end-to-end issues 

• Issues are diagnosed 

independently in technology 

silos 

• Locating and identifying 

precise root cause is were 

most time is lost 

Limited Automation and Effective Tools with Increasing Skill Gaps 


8 

The Life of an Outage 

Typically Service Degradation Precedes an Outage 

Service degradations typically have a bigger 

impact to the business than outages... 

Performance 

issues frequently 

lead to outages 

Available 

Unavailable 

601 minutes Service Degradation 

103 minutes unavailability 

Recovery 

Started Started 

Recovery 

Ended Ended 

10:29 Performance Issues 18:30 20:13 

End users still remain the primary means for learning about problems 


9 

The Anatomy of “MTTR” 

Reduce Impact by Accelerating MTTK 

Time starts at “discovery” 

• Problem discovered 

• User calls the helpdesk 

MTTR 

MTTI MTTK in Overall Time MTTF MTTV 

Mean time to 

identify there is 

a problem 

Mean time 

to knowledge 

Biggest Variable 

to Resolve 

Mean time 

to fix 

Mean time 

to verify 


10 

Managing User Experience 

Monitor 

Networks 

User Experience 

“Most IT groups monitor key network and system 

components, but a lack of visibility into the end-to-end 

health of applications often results in IT managers 

spending too much time trying to isolate problems. 

Meanwhile, users are frustrated, the organization’s 

mission is suffering and revenue is being lost.” 

InfoWorld – APM Report 

or 

Monitor 

Applications 

“End-user experience monitoring will shift 

from a focus on the performance of 

individual applications to a focus on enduser 

behaviors and interactions with the 

application portfolio as a whole.” 

Gartner – January, 2011 


11 

What Impacts User Experience? 

It’s a Multi-Dimensional Challenge 

Application 

Behavior 

Attacks & 

Threats 

Network 

Behavior 

User 

Behavior 

Cloud and 

Content 

Providers 

S e r v i c e Av a i l a b i l i t y, Q u a l i t y a n d U s e r E x p e r i e n c e 


B u s i n e s s A n d I T S e r v i c e M a n a g e m e n t V a l u e 

12 

The Evolution of 

“Performance Management” 

It’s No Longer About Individual “Elements” – 

It’s about Services and their “Relationships” 

Monitor Service Delivery & Relationships 

Unified view of physical and virtual services delivered 

Monitor Application Elements 

Inter-app calls and components 

Application Performance Management 

Network Performance Management 

Monitor Physical Elements 

Servers, links, devices 

Service Delivery Management 

R e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f U s e r E x p e r i e n c e 


13 

The Network Connects 

IT To User Experience 

Platforms 

The Packet - Flow Advantage 

The Network is the Only Common, Single Element That Connects and 

Enables All Components of the IT Infrastructure and Service Delivery 


14 

Unified Approach to Managing 

Service Delivery 

Adopt a servicecentric 

approach 

Move from reactive to 

proactive, real-time 

service management 

Abstract and 

simplify service 

complexity 

Unified and holistic view of 

multidimensional services Enable visibility for 

any type of service 

end-to-end 

Simplified views of all 

services and delivery 

elements for effective 

management reducing 

complexity, and assuring 

services availability 

Know about problems 

before users and solve 

problems fast 

Support multiple 

service delivery 

stakeholders 

Automate the capture 

and use of business 

service intelligence 


15 

Unified Service Delivery Management 

Framework 

Real-time 

& Historical 

V i s u a l i z a t i o n a n d R e p o r t i n g 

Predictive Early 

Warning 

Triage & 

Troubleshooting 

C o r r e l a t i o n a n d A n a l y s i s 

P e r v a s i v e V i s i b i l i t y 

Proactive 

Planning 

Users Devices 

Locations 

Network Elements 


16 

Pervasive Visibility is Essential for 

Effective Service Delivery Management 

View of Service Delivery 

From the Datacenter, to the Campus, to the Branch, to the User 

E n d - t o - E n d V i s i b i l i t y o f S e r v i c e F l o w s 

Access Distribution 

Data Center 

Branch/ 

IP Network Core 

Si Si 

Users Users 

D e p t h R e a c h C o n t e x t S c a l e 

• Full Packet – Layers 2-7 

• All Services & Applications 

• Network and Service 

Enablers 

• End-to-End Coverage 

• Networks, Services, Users 

• Data Center Core 

Access User 

MPLS 

WAN 

• Flows, Sessions, Users 

• Physical and Logical Views 

• Service Consumption and 

Cross-Impact 

• Local processing, storage 

and analysis 

• High traffic volumes 

• 10ks of users, 1Ks of 

apps, 100s of locations 


17 

Where to Extract Intelligence 

Unified Correlated View Across the Enterprise 

Integration Into 

3 rd Party 

Management 

Platforms 

Goal: Cover service 

flows from hosting to 

consumption 

• Data Center 

Data services 

UC services 

Multi-data center 

environments 

Physical and virtual 

• WAN Edge (Core) 

Traffic in and out of the 

DC and campus over 

MPLS or VPLS 

Traffic to & from the 

cloud & Internet 

• Campus Environment 

Core, distribution and 

high impact workgroups 

• WAN Edge (Branch) 

ALL traffic in & out of 

branch (to data center, 

internet and cloud + site 

to site) 

Branch office LAN – 

local user performance 


18 

Extending Visibility to the Branch 

See ALL Local Services – Cloud and Site-to-Site 

Branch 

nGenius 

Integrated 

Agent 

Branch 

Branch 

nGenius 

Integrated 

Agent 

IP/MPLS 

WAN 

VPN/VPLS 

No 

Traffic 

Flow 

nGenius 

Integrated Agent 

Cloud 


Internet 

WAN 

Edge 

nGenius 

InfiniStream 

Datacenter 

Situation 

• Growth in 

Site-to-Site Traffic 

• Virtualized Local 

Traffic 

• Distributed Cloud 


Challenge 

Need Local Visibility for ALL traffic… 

…Even traffic not destined for the datacenter 

• Traffic Never 

Reaches Datacenter 

• Lost Visibility 

Into Local Service 

Performance & User 

Experience 


19 

Visualization and Reporting 

Support Diverse Service Management Needs Across IT 

Performance 

Management 

• Unified views 

across domains 

• Common toolset 

across groups 

• Align operations 

and process 

• Improve IT 

collaboration 

Service Visualization & Intelligent Early Warning 

Service & 

Policy 

Validation 

Service 

& Network 

Optimization 

Consistent Data, 

Unified Views and Metrics 

Forensic 

Analysis 

Reporting & 

Trending 

• Improved service 

velocity 

• Operational 

consistency 

• Investment 

leverage 

• Lower TCO 

Manage End-to-End IP Service Delivery From a Single Platform 


20 

Simplify Workflows 

Unified and Contextual Service-Oriented Analysis 

Service Visualization 

and Early Warning 

Flow-based 

Analysis & Reporting 

Deep Packet 

Drill-down 

Anomalies & KPIs Services, Users, Sessions Granular Packet Analysis 

• User experience and service 

level management 

• Business-oriented end-toend 

service visibility 

• Analytics, KPIs, Alarms 

• Automated problem and 

cyber threat detection 

Cross-indexed Metrics 

• End-to-end session and flowbased 

analysis 

• Application, network and user 

correlation with 

• See service interdependencies 

• Real-time and historical insight 

• Multi-domain session analysis 

with granular packet-level 

views 

• Application intelligence with 

expert analysis 

• Packet data mining 

• Historical forensic analysis 

Automated and Streamlined Approach to Service Management 


21 

Protecting the User Experience: 

Where Do You Want to Be? 

Reactive Proactive 

Solve Problems Quickly 

Ability to react fast with 

insight to rapidly solve 

problems when users call 

help desk 

Responsive 

Detect Problems Early 

Detect and resolve widespread 

degradations or 

outages before the users 

call the help desk 

Preemptive 

Avoid Problems 

Automatically identify 

anomalous behavior that 

could lead to problems 

before users are effected 

Predict & Prevent 

Enable IT teams to better collaborate on problem identification and resolution 


22 

The Business Service Dashboard: 

A Single Unified View of Business Services 

View “services” the way they are 

deployed in your organization 

• Unified business perspective 

of complex service delivery 

environments 

• Track your most important 

business applications 

• Dynamic representation of 

service elements correlated 

with user experience 

• Robust analytics automates 

analysis and detects anomalies 

• Seamless workflows enable 

high level to low level analysis 

• Intuitive, easy-to-use operation 

– supports multiple audiences 


23 

Unified View Into Critical Business Services 

Correlates Logical “Service” Components 

Services, Content, 

Applications 

Any Service End-to-End 

End-to-End Network 


24 

Intelligent Early Warning 

Automated Alerts into Emerging Performance Issues 

Identify Service Issues Before Large Numbers of Users Are Affected 

Alerts on service, 

application and 

network performance 

Simplified view into 

end-to-end service 

delivery 

• Throughput 

• Response Time 

• Session success 

• Session failures 

• Traffic volume 

User Experience Metrics 

• Voice quality 

• Video quality 

• Latency 

• TCP Metrics 

• Errors 

Alerts on potential 

security and 

cyberthreats 

Quickly identify 

and triage 

problems 


25 

The Value of Network-Based Analytics 

Early Notification of Traffic Pattern Changes 

Simple Threshold 

Threshold passed once 

Threshold-based alarms provide 

notification when an event occurs 

that has already impacted users 

Threshold Over Time 

Threshold passed 

for period of time 

Threshold alerts miss early indicators 

of important traffic changes 

Anomaly Detection 

Significant change caught 

by anomaly detection 

Behavior-based alarms warn of 

emerging issues that allows time 

to address emerging performance 

before users are impacted 


26 

Unified Service Representation 

Aggregate View of Service Element Performance 

Top level view reveals 

service status 

Drill-down to see all 

service elements 

Drill-down to sessions 

and transactions 

Specific Services | Logical Groups of Users | Geographical Users 

Network Elements, Applications, Servers and Enablers 

Service Flows Tracked From Pervasive nGenius Intelligent Data Sources 

End-to-End IP Service Traffic 

Correlated Unified 

“Service” View 


27 

Traditional Security Approach 

is No Longer Enough 

Changing 

Threat 

Vectors 

• Internal and external attacks 

• Denial-of-service attacks 

• Network breaches 

• Impersonation (Spoofing) 

• Data leaks 

Traditional Perimeter 

NAC / Desktop 

Service Delivery Environment 

Firewall | IPS | Appliances 

Increased scope 

of damage with 

a shorter time 

to respond 


28 

Extending Your Security Architecture 

Improving Situational Awareness 

Layer of 

visibility over 

existing 

security 

solutions 

• Leverage service management systems already deployed 

• Visibility into both applications and network layers 

• Identify anomalies, behavior changes and policy violations 

• Early warning to the Cyber Defense Alert Center (CDAC) 

• Integrated anomaly detection into ArcSight ETRM platforms 

• Complemented with extensive post-event forensic capabilities 

• Which servers affected 

• Which ports affected 

• Which users affected 

• How fast is threat spreading 

• Which paths affected 

• Which open ports allowed attack 


Business Impact 

29 

The Operational Value: 

Move from Responsive to Predictive 

Automated 

Analytics Alarm 

Predictive 

Abnormal Condition Begins 

Threshold 

Alarm 

Avoid 

User Impact 

User 

Impact 

Preemptive 

Time 

Problem is Recognized 

User Calls 

Help Desk 

Minimize 

User Impact 

Responsive 

Typical Problem 

Resolution Cycle 

Reduce 

User Impact 

Root Cause Found Problem Resolved 


30 

Poor Voice / Video Quality 

What Can Go Wrong … 

Scrambled Video 

Acoustic Echo 

Poor Performing 

CPE 

Campus 

Network 

Environmental 

Issues 

Network 

Performance 

Improper Software 

Implementation 

IP/MPLS 

WAN 

PSTN 

Edge-Device 

Performance 

Other Networks, 

Carriers and Endpoints 

Long Voice Path Delays 

IP Packet Transmission Problems 

Application 

Performance 

Broadband 

Mobile/VPN 

Performance 

Changing 

Transmission Rates 

IP 

Far End 

Branch 

Office 

Misconfigured Gateways, 

Networks and Codecs 

Endpoint 

Performance 

Call Echo 

Misconfigured 

End-Points 


31 

The Unified Communications Environment 

• Multi-vendor UC deployments 

• Mixed vendor endpoints 

• Hard/soft endpoints 

• Uncompromising interoperability 

Campus 

LAN 

Data Center 

Complex Service Delivery Chain 

PSTN 

• Remote workers 

• Multi-carrier transport networks 

• Hosted services 

• Multiple IT support groups involved 

WAN 

Broadband 

Branch 

Other 

Location 

Mobile 

Network 


32 

Current UC Service Management 

Approaches Aren’t Enough… 

• Vendor tools focus on own technologies 

• Vendor-specific tools don’t identify 

underlying performance issues 

• No integrated voice, video and data 

service delivery management 

• Most solutions focused on networks 

• Need common tools for diverse 

IT teams and skills 

Enterprise 

Voice 

Network Performance 

not good enough Proxy 

for User Experience 

• Packet loss 

• Jitter 

• Latency 

Enterprise 

Video 


33 

Assure Enterprise VoIP QoE 

• End-to-end IPT call visibility – 

within site and site-to-site 

• Network + voice call characteristics 

• Real-time in-call quality changes 

• Per-user voice quality metrics 

PSTN 

Note: Call visibility requires local instrumentation 

WAN 

Large Branch Office Regional Call Center 

Other Far End 


34 

Assure Telepresence QoE 

• End-to-end session visibility with multi-site coverage 

• Combined voice and video transmission with 

granular per-stream analysis 

• Detects session quality changes during session 

• Real-time in-session monitoring for critical events 

Los Angeles 

Note: Call visibility requires local instrumentation 

WAN 

London 

New York 


35 

Assure Video Conferencing QoE 

• Point-to-point AND point-to-multi-point conferences 

• Combined Video and Voice performance metrics – 

even if traveling different paths (PSTN & IP Network) 

• Multi-user combined session and “per-leg” metrics 

• Supports fixed and soft-client endpoints 

Note: Call visibility 

requires instrumentation 

San 

Jose 

Remote 

Workers 

WAN 

Broadband + VPN 

Dallas 

Hong 

Kong 

London 


36 

Collecting User Experience Traffic Metrics 

nGenius 

Voice | Video Manager 

Visualization & Reporting 

Analysis & Diagnostics 

Aggregation & Correlation 

End-Point 

Metrics 

Campus 

Network 

Embedded 

Metrics 

Instrumentation 

• nGenius appliances provide real-time passive packet-flow 

analysis 

• Measurements from agents embedded in soft-clients 

• CDR data leveraged from IPT session managers & SBCs 

Data 

• User Experience metrics extracted from media streams 

• Real-time measurements updated during user sessions 

• CDR data is correlated with session data for unified reporting 

WAN/ 

PSTN 

Call Path 

Metrics 

Data 

Center 

Session 

Records 

3 rd Party 

CDRs 

End-Point 

Metrics 

IP 

Far End 

Branch 

Office 

PSTN 


37 

Cross-Organizational Leverage 

Unified Perspective Across The IT Organization 

One Unified Platform Leveraged Across the IT Organization 

O p e r a t i o n a l C o n s i s t e n c y , F l e x i b i l i t y & C o l l a b o r a t i o n 

Reduces cost of IT operations through improved 

operational efficiency, IT staff collaboration and tool consolidation 

Consistent Data, Unified Views 


38 

Deployment-Proven Business Value 

A survey of 8 long time users 

revealed a 5-year ROI of 685% 

• Consistent 80-90% reduction in 

response and repair time 

• Diagnose and resolve IT servicerelated 

problems more rapidly 

• First year savings of $1.6M, with 

a total 5 year savings of $7.6M 

• 3 year ROI of 434% and 5 Year 

ROI of 685% 

• Investment payback in 

less than 8 months 

Total First Year Savings: $ 1.6M 

Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey 

Consistently Faster Problem Resolution 

Percentage IT 

Staff Productivity 

Improvements 

“The nGenius Service Assurance 

Solution ranks near the top of all IT 

investments made in delivering aboveaverage 

financial returns.” 

Chadwick Martin Bailey Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey 


L o w e r O p e x 

39 

NetScout is Transforming 

Performance Management 

• Availability, quality, and 

consistency of services 

• Existing asset longevity 

and performance 

• Harvest value from core 

technology investments 

Unified Service Delivery Management 

Optimize 

Protect Simplify 

• Assure performance 

of delivered services 

• Quickly identify and solve 

performance problems 

• Prevent and minimize 

service disruptions 

• Reduce complexity of 

IP service management 

• Enable collaboration 

across organizations 

• Reduce tool complexity 

and lower Opex 

I n c r e a s e A v a i l a b i l i t y 


40 

www.netscout.com 


41 

3 

2 

1 

Unified Service Delivery Management: 

Foundation Capabilities 

Visualization 

and Reporting 

Correlation 

and Analysis 

Pervasive 

Visibility 

• Multiple views of actionable intelligence 

• Reveal interrelationships and dependencies 

• Real-time and historical views and reports 

• Flexibility and granularity for multiple stakeholders 

• All applications services and protocols 

• Adaptive data model-driven correlation of service flows 

• Multi-location, multi-domain correlation 

• Delivery experience on per-user, per-service basis 

• Non-intrusive capture and real-time analysis of complete 

set of IP data relating to infrastructure, services, devices 

• Scalable and extensible 

• Flexibility for deployment end-to-end across enterprise 


Use specific tools to drill into identified issues 

42 

Correlation and Analysis 

Multi-Dimensional View into Service Delivery 

Overarching view provides an organizing layer – 

Identifies there is a problem… and where to focus to resolve 

User 

LAN 

User 

User 

User 

Enterprise Network Infrastructure WAN 

Service Flows and Transactions 

Enablers 

Applications 

Application Infrastructure 

User 

DNS/Radius AAA Security 

User 

Network Security 

ADC/SLB Data Center Network 

WOC 

Web Servers App Servers DB Servers 

Cloud 

Storage 

Virtualized servers 

• Deep Packet Analysis enables 

granular service flow context 

• Multiple location correlation 

• Correlate high volume of transactions 

• Support for data, voice and video 

applications (not just .NET and J2EE) 

• User/session specific granularity 

• Network-based analytics identify 

behavior changes and emerging 

problems 

• Distributed analysis – analysis 

performed on local appliances

Service - NetScout

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