In 2020, Cisco acquired the cloud intelligence firm ThousandEyes, Inc., which permits companies to have a complete view of their IT ecosystems. With this acquisition, Cisco clients are capable of see each their inner and exterior providers.

I just lately had the pleasure of getting a digital fireplace chat with two educated ThousandEyes consultants: James Lake, Vice President of the Americas, and Invoice Donoghue, Chief of Methods Engineering. They kindly provided to reply some questions I incessantly hear from clients about ThousandEyes.

Q: ThousandEyes has been a profitable acquisition for Cisco. To what do you attribute that success?

James: Nice query, Cliff, and we might in all probability spend a few hours on that. At a excessive degree, although, there are a few elements. Initially, it’s the energy and relevance of the know-how. As we see clients spend money on issues like hybrid work, cloud/SaaS, and SDWAN, and even bettering their very own clients’ digital expertise, they turn into increasingly more depending on networks and environments they don’t personal or management. And that’s ThousandEyes’ candy spot — delivering higher visibility into environments clients don’t personal or management.

Invoice: I fully agree, James. We are able to monitor experiences — purposes, providers, customers — and perceive how these experiences are being delivered over no matter community they’re flowing throughout, whether or not that’s the shopper’s community, a cloud or SaaS supplier, and even the web. To prime it off, we correlate that have instantly with the community supply, permitting clients not solely to see if it’s an software or community downside, however when there’s a community downside, determine precisely the place it’s coming from, no matter whose community it’s. So actually, we’re so market related as a result of the use circumstances the place we’re actually sturdy — hybrid work, cloud/SaaS, community modernization, and buyer DX — are issues that the majority clients are coping with at this time.

James: Different causes embrace the pure synergy we have now with different Cisco applied sciences, the simplicity and time to worth of the answer, and we actually can’t overlook to say tradition. All of us method what we do with a relentless give attention to buyer success. An amazing product that’s straightforward to deploy and use makes that simpler to do, however our entire staff is targeted on serving to Cisco make our clients profitable and ship distinctive worth.

Q: You talked about Cisco synergy. I’ve seen ThousandEyes in a wide range of use circumstances throughout Cisco. As we drive ahead on this digitally related world, how do you see ThousandEyes interlocking with options throughout the Cisco portfolio to supply true enterprise outcomes to clients?

James: Properly, this is likely one of the causes many people have been so enthusiastic about being acquired by Cisco. It’s not simply that we combine with different Cisco options; we’re developing with distinctive and modern methods of delivering extra worth. We began by prioritizing making it simpler for our clients to deploy ThousandEyes and achieve higher visibility leveraging their present infrastructure. We did this by embedding our agent know-how with Cisco routing, switching, and SDWAN platforms, making it quite simple, straightforward, and cost-effective to realize visibility with ThousandEyes. We’ve additionally performed some nice issues by offering visibility into collaboration providers like WebEx, and there’s glorious synergy and integration with AppDynamics that drive our Full Stack Observability providing. The thrilling half is that that is just the start!

Q: That’s nice! I’ve heard it acknowledged that you just empower clients to thrive in an internet-centric world. Are you able to inform us the way you view your pulse on the well being of the web? I, for one, at all times obtain info from you on when and why my e mail doesn’t work.

James: You’ve heard me say, “We’re the authority on the web.” Principally, we will use our huge information set — billions of metrics per day — to rapidly floor points or issues with ISPs or SaaS purposes that aren’t remoted to only one buyer. This permits clients, and us, to instantly know when there are issues on the web that can intrude with purposes or providers we depend on. What else, Invoice?

Invoice: Properly, I feel it’s vital to know what you’d do with this info. In order James stated, not solely will we let you know if there’s a downside with a SaaS software, but additionally what areas of the world are being impacted. Equally, for ISPs, if there’s a community challenge on the web, we are going to present what goal networks and providers are affected, in addition to what areas are impacted. Some people could say, “Properly, so what? I can’t do something to repair these issues.” This is likely to be true, however they rapidly understand that the period of time and assets saved by realizing this proper up entrance is great. They not spend hours making an attempt to troubleshoot an issue, solely to seek out out they will’t repair it as a result of the problem is with another person. Consequently, they will also be rather more proactive with their clients and staff when service disruptions which may be outdoors their management happen. We incessantly detect issues hours earlier than distributors submit them to their standing pages — even earlier than customers begin complaining. {Our capability} right here is predicated on precise information, not simply complaints.

Q: As I’m listening to you guys, it appears that evidently ThousandEyes’ attain is expansive by way of who will profit from it. You speak about community path visibly that an engineer would possibly care about, in addition to greater degree outage info from a possible strategic companion that an government would possibly wish to know. So who do you see as ThousandEyes’ goal shopper?

James: After all, it’s everybody! I even use it at house when my web isn’t working.

Invoice: You wouldn’t be the primary individual, James. I feel you’re proper, although, Cliff. Not solely is ThousandEyes one thing that has great worth for engineering or specialist groups, but additionally for IT operations. Once more, it’s nice at figuring out the fault area, so it’s very useful for operations in that sense. Figuring out the place the issue is offers the flexibility to keep away from the blame sport and “struggle room” calls with dozens of individuals. Even at greater ranges of a company, the info we acquire can present worthwhile perception into an organization’s SLAs with its clients, companions, and distributors to allow them to be held accountable. It’s additionally vital to level out that ThousandEyes isn’t simply helpful to community groups, app groups, and operations. We see safety groups, incident administration, collaboration providers, end-user computing, web site reliability, vendor administration, and even advertising groups discovering worth within the information and perception it could present.

Q: This has been nice, guys. I actually recognize it. What’s subsequent for you and the ThousandEyes staff?

James: Thanks, Cliff. We love and recognize the partnership! I consider the long run may be very vivid for us. We’re rising, and we’re investing. Our product staff is doing superb issues, not solely innovating with completely different Cisco applied sciences, but additionally bettering the general high quality of the info we acquire. We’re doing a little superb work in creating intelligence to assist clients make predictive networking selections based mostly on the info we’re accumulating. It’s actually thrilling. Total, I consider we will present up in new methods for our clients. We may also help them perceive the distinctive challenges introduced in how IT is evolving and in the end assist them be extra environment friendly and efficient in servicing their clients and staff.

Should you’d wish to be taught extra about ThousandEyes, please discover the platform and think about a free trial.

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