AppNeta Launches New SaaS-based Service for Ensuring UCaaS Performance and Reliability

There’s an old adage that says, “slow but steady wins the race.” While this may apply to some fields, in business communications, slow but steady doesn’t always lead to success. An available but slow cloud-based communications service, for instance, won’t cut it, especially for businesses with remote teams. Poor voice, video, or chat quality could not only lead to ineffective communications, but could also mean a loss of productivity and, in turn, a loss of revenue. That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to maintain business connectivity and network reliability each and every time.

AppNeta, a leading provider of application and network monitoring solutions, knows that today’s businesses need and expect nothing but the best performance from their applications and networks. Thus, they have recently unveiled a solution designed to help teams ensure reliable application delivery for every cloud, for any user, from any location: the AppNeta Performance Manager.

In this article, Sean Armstrong, Vice President of Product at AppNeta, discusses with VoipReview.org how their newest offering can help businesses ensure a healthy, reliable communications network and optimize a business’ Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) experience.

Ensuring Reliable, Consistent Business Communications

Business communications are increasingly reliant on cloud-based applications and UC services. Instead of traditional telephony, more companies use various cloud-based video, voice, or messaging tools to connect, collaborate, and communicate with teams, customers, and clients. The proliferation of third-party cloud-based apps for business, however, has introduced new challenges, especially for a business’ IT and network operations teams.

“The challenge for IT and network operations teams is that they do not have control over cloud-based applications, yet they are still responsible for the end-user experience," said Armstrong. "They get the first call when there is an issue.”

Because most IT teams do not control or own the cloud communications services that are usually deployed within an organization, they often do not have the means and resources to proactively identify and resolve communication issues as they arise. Without such tools, communications downtime may be inevitable. This is the problem the AppNeta Performance Manager seeks to solve. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based service, AppNeta Performance Manager aims to provide businesses complete visibility into their applications and networks to ensure consistent performance.

“AppNeta Performance Manager is for IT and network operations teams that have a visibility gap caused by the adoption of cloud-based applications or by end users connecting over public internet connections,” explained Armstrong. “These are teams that used to have network and application visibility—when they controlled their in-house, legacy infrastructure—but now they simply can’t see what is going on. Yet they’re still responsible for the performance of those apps and networks,” he explained.

How AppNeta Performance Manager Works

AppNeta Performance Manager unites three different types of measuring and monitoring to provide a complete picture of end-user experience with any application or network. Armstrong explains that AppNeta Performance Manager combines application usage monitoring, automatically identifying more than 1,600 applications, with active synthetic web and network traffic monitoring. “The result is that you’ll know all the applications running across your organization, and then be able to quickly troubleshoot to isolate the application from network issues,” said Armstrong.

Armstrong also said that the AppNeta Performance Manager was inspired by the original work of Fred Klassen, one of AppNeta’s founders, who created TruPath technology to measure network capacity and performance. “TruPath uses a technology called packet train dispersion, which allows us to provide that same capacity measurement, along with a host of other metrics, while only using small packet bursts (in the 20-50 range),” Armstrong explained. “ That means we don’t take up capacity, and, most importantly, that we can run continuously; we run tests once per minute. So you get real-time visibility into network issues as they happen, as opposed to hearing about them from your users.”

AppNeta Performance Manager takes it a step further by providing automatic diagnostics that start as soon as an issue is detected. For example, once the solution identifies 88 common network issues, it will then show IT and network operation teams not only where the problem is but what is the likely cause.

With more companies moving to the cloud, Armstrong said IT teams need visibility more than ever. “If the old answer of “well, the site is up for me” was unsatisfying 10 years ago, it’s positively infuriating for users today. Application performance and experience is, at the end of the day, a location-specific issue. So IT needs to have visibility into the actual end-user experience for every application from their location. And they need to understand every application that is running across their organization and how they impact each other,” he explained.

AppNeta Performance Manager is available for as low as $1,299 per year to monitor up to five applications. Packages are also available for large offices, data centers, and global locations.

Learn more about AppNeta and how they are helping teams ensure continuous application and network performance by visiting AppNeta’s website.

About AppNeta

AppNeta is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based application and network monitoring solutions for the distributed, cloud-connected, digital enterprise. From small businesses to large corporations, AppNeta gives companies access to essential data to monitor and track the performance of their business-critical cloud and SaaS applications. AppNeta was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.