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 in a position to see each their inner and exterior providers.
I not too long ago 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 supplied to reply some questions I continuously 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 may in all probability spend a few hours on that. At a excessive degree, although, there are a few components. Initially, it’s the power and relevance of the know-how. As we see clients put money into issues like hybrid work, cloud/SaaS, and SDWAN, and even bettering their very own clients’ digital expertise, they change 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 — functions, 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 high it off, we correlate that have immediately 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 almost all clients are coping with right this moment.
James: Different causes embrace the pure synergy we now have with different Cisco applied sciences, the simplicity and time to worth of the answer, and we definitely can’t overlook to say tradition. All of us method what we do with a relentless give attention to buyer success. A terrific product that’s straightforward to deploy and use makes that simpler to do, however our complete workforce is concentrated 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 linked world, how do you see ThousandEyes interlocking with options throughout the Cisco portfolio to supply true enterprise outcomes to clients?
James: Nicely, this is among 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 progressive 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 completed 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 simply 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.” Mainly, we are able to use our monumental information set — billions of metrics per day — to rapidly floor points or issues with ISPs or SaaS functions that aren’t remoted to only one buyer. This permits clients, and us, to instantly know when there are issues on the web that may intervene with functions or providers we depend on. What else, Invoice?
Invoice: Nicely, I feel it’s essential to grasp what you’d do with this info. In order James stated, not solely will we inform you 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 situation on the web, we’ll present what goal networks and providers are affected, in addition to what areas are impacted. Some of us might say, “Nicely, so what? I can’t do something to repair these issues.” This could be true, however they rapidly understand that the period of time and assets saved by realizing this proper up entrance is great. They now not spend hours attempting to troubleshoot an issue, solely to seek out out they’ll’t repair it as a result of the problem is with another person. Consequently, they will also be far more proactive with their clients and staff when service disruptions which may be exterior their management happen. We continuously detect issues hours earlier than distributors put up 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, evidently ThousandEyes’ attain is expansive by way of who will profit from it. You discuss community path visibly that an engineer would possibly care about, in addition to greater degree outage info from a possible strategic associate that an government would possibly wish to know. So who do you see as ThousandEyes’ goal shopper?
James: In fact, it’s everybody! I even use it at dwelling 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. Realizing the place the issue is supplies the power to keep away from the blame recreation and “battle room” calls with dozens of individuals. Even at greater ranges of a company, the info we accumulate can present invaluable perception into an organization’s SLAs with its clients, companions, and distributors to allow them to be held accountable. It’s additionally essential 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, website reliability, vendor administration, and even advertising and marketing groups discovering worth within the information and perception it could actually present.
Q: This has been nice, guys. I actually admire it. What’s subsequent for you and the ThousandEyes workforce?
James: Thanks, Cliff. We love and admire the partnership! I imagine the longer term may be very shiny for us. We’re rising, and we’re investing. Our product workforce is doing superb issues, not solely innovating with totally different Cisco applied sciences, but additionally bettering the general high quality of the info we accumulate. We’re performing some superb work in creating intelligence to assist clients make predictive networking selections primarily based on the info we’re amassing. It’s actually thrilling. Total, I imagine we are able to present up in new methods for our clients. We will help them perceive the distinctive challenges introduced in how IT is evolving and finally assist them be extra environment friendly and efficient in servicing their clients and staff.
In the event you’d wish to study extra about ThousandEyes, please discover the platform and think about a free trial.
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