Viavi Solutions enhances Observer Platform for enterprise networks

Viavi Solutions has announced a bevy of enhancements to its Observer Platform, building on its comprehensive enterprise networking solutions. The updates place a stronger emphasis on maximising network availability, productivity, and compliance through innovative add-ons such as End-User Experience (EUE) scoring, innovative digital certificate analysis, unified communications (UC) support, and Azure traffic visibility through NSG flow log analysis.

The company's proprietary 'State of the Network' study indicated that the majority of enterprise applications are now cloud-based, yet less than 1% of organisations are completely satisfied with their own network visibility.

Troubleshooting across various domains: network, server, application, or client, poses a significant challenge for NetOps teams. Moreover, end-user experience was identified as the top key performance indicator (KPI). The enhancements of the Observer platform aim to conquer these challenges and ensure the reliability of networks in adhering to organisational objectives.

Key features of the updated Observer platform include new EUE Scoring Updates, which provide increased insight into each problem domain, highlighting individual scores and building understanding around performance degradation factors. The inclusion of NSG Flow Log support contributes in-depth visibility to Azure environments, much like the existing capabilities for AWS using VPC Flow Logs. Furthermore, the Observer Platform now recognises thousands of specific applications natively via enhanced application recognition capabilities.

Moreover, Viavi Solutions has stepped up the UC Call Visualization in the Observer platform, creating intuitive, actionable visualisations that trace calls done through network infrastructure and pinpoint any scope of poor UC performance. Management of digital certificates has also been addressed, presenting a proactive approach to tackle non-compliant or expired certificates, securing networks and helping maintain reputation.

Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, noted, "Applications are now distributed across private data centres, multiple public clouds, and edge locations."

"Yet many companies fail to upgrade their network monitoring and management solutions to keep pace with these complex environments. VIAVI recognised this shift and responded by providing comprehensive visibility across these distributed, heterogeneous environments," said Bob Laliberte.

Chris Labac, Vice President and General Manager of Network Performance and Threat Solutions at VIAVI, emphasised the collaborative effort with customers to enhance performance and threat visibility. Together, they have developed a robust set of capabilities that deliver crucial insights precisely where they are most needed. "In partnership with our customers, we have levelled up performance and threat visibility and developed a powerful set of capabilities that provide insights where they are needed most," he said. 

Chris continued, "Our patented End-User Experience Scoring can now be used by virtually the entire IT team to effectively identify, prioritise, and remediate business-impacting issues. Our UC visualisations are now the best in the industry. New DPI and Azure capabilities round out a release that we are thrilled to deliver."