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End-User Service Quality Improves With NETSCOUT Visibility
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases
- Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems
- Fleet Management
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
The overriding mission of this organization’s IT team is to optimize the availability, performance, and security of the applications, communications, and networking systems used between personnel around the world and departments and agencies they work with. This required comprehensive network and application performance visibility, continuous monitoring and automated remediation processes, and orchestration of security and network management systems. Ultimately, a key goal and driver for visibility into these services was to additionally ensure quality end-user experience from dozens of global locations. Regardless of whether personnel were using Microsoft Office 365 (O365) or Microsoft Teams, Web and cloud services using HTTP and DNS, or accessing data centers over VPN or with virtual desktop interfaces (VDIs) like Citrix, the users expected and required a high-quality, seamless experience.
About The Customer
Ensuring the security, performance, and availability of their application services worldwide for this branch of the United States Military is a challenging mission for their IT and Security operations teams. This military branch is supported by hundreds of thousands of active-duty personnel and ready reservists, along with many thousands more civilian employees deployed in global locations. The criticality of swift, unencumbered communications to and from these service people and locations cannot be overstated, particularly considering that the safety and protection of US citizens may hang in the balance. Military branch personnel leverage their networked applications for multiple purposes, ranging from simple email, voice services, and video conferencing (unified communications & collaboration – UC&C), to enterprise resource planning (ERP) for ordering and delivering all their equipment, uniforms, food, and other supplies, just to highlight a few important services. Given the importance of these activities, IT and SecOps teams are ever diligent in helping deliver seamless, secure communications to all, regardless of the physical location.
The Solution
With end-user performance from primary global locations of critical importance, the lead technical advisor and other IT staff turned to their recently deployed NETSCOUT solutions for service assurance and performance management. The complete solution included nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform with InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances for real-time, passive monitoring of application and network performance via packet flows throughout the worldwide network, nGenius Packet Flow Switches for network packet acquisition, aggregation, and distribution to ISNG appliances and other monitoring tools, and nGeniusPULSE with distributed nPoint devices for continuous testing and end-user experience analysis. Specifically related to the end-user experience mission, nGeniusPULSE with series 2000 and 3000 nPoint sensors had been deployed at nearly 100 remote locations to measure, evaluate, troubleshoot, and understand issues impacting performance experienced by the users. At each remote location, a series of custom-configured, scheduled, synthetic tests were implemented to evaluate data center and cloud-based applications. These active tests, known as Business Transaction Tests (BTT), were intended to track and trend metrics on application service quality as felt by end users. The tests operated continuously, even when users were not active, which enabled IT and SecOps teams to ensure that issues were detected as they emerged, sometimes before personnel even knew they existed.
Operational Impact
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