Think of the hidden issues that pop up while running a network. It’s like an iceberg; large, lurking, unfriendly, unknown and indefinable – a cold and dark world where nothing is well understood. As us network folks tend to live in a fact-based world, this realm can be a bit puzzling.

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We submit our budgets with the belief—an idealistic idea—that nothing will go wrong. And that if it does, the money we have so judiciously spent on monitoring tools will somehow surface the truth in our time of need – to reveal the hidden part of the iceberg. We will reach out to our favorite tool, sift through the mountain of data it provides, have our moment of clarity, close our eyes and touch the iceberg directly on the chilly spot that ails our infrastructure. My work here is done.

What a nice place that must be. Where network problems announce themselves, state their names, dutifully take a number and wait their turn in triage.

But the truth, as they say, is a bit more nuanced. Nagging performance problems come and go. Pop up and then disappear behind the soft edges of the next underwater contour. And then the next. And the next. And the next.

In discussions with customers and prospects we have heard this over and over again. Reducing time to resolve is one of the most nagging problems facing operations teams today. Anecdotally, a typical incident takes nearly 4 hours to bring to conclusion. The majority of this time is spent cross-referencing data provided by different systems. Most technicians know how to work a problem from the bottom of the communications stack up. But oftentimes it is the performance characteristics at both the network and application (and everything in between) layers where the truth lies.

The Secret to Reducing Time to Resolve

At Exinda, we believe that providing codified data that correlates network and application performance information helps reduce time to resolution. Providing a complete end-to-end picture of visibility gives admins all the data they need at their fingertips. During the beta testing of one of our new products recently, a customer declared that our functionality cut that 4-hour exercise into a 5-minute one. No longer did his operations people have to run from system to system to triangulate what was wrong. They simply looked at the Exinda and placed their fingertip directly on that icy spot. Problem solved.

Not that we’re counting, but that’s a 98% cut in time to resolution.

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