The bank’s biggest challenge was a lack of visibility into critical business applications and services, at the network and application level. The NetOps team was responsible for monitoring hundreds of virtual links, but had no alarming set up to let them know if one of those links had an issue. They had hundreds of business applications they were responsible for, but no proactive application performance monitoring or alerting. Many of these business applications were critical for revenue generation or customer retention, some used to interconnect with third party payment processors or other execution of financial transactions. User experience suffered when these applications experienced degraded performance and IT was left unaware until end users complained. Security was also a concern to the bank, as they strived to find ways to identify unauthorized attempts to access the network.

The financial institution was undergoing a multi-year digital transformation project aimed at revolutionizing how services are delivered to their end users. This included moving some of their infrastructure services to Cologix and Equinix for hosting some of their data center and infrastructure needs. They also selected VMware as part of their virtualization strategy, making deployment of new, customer-benefiting applications and services faster and more agile. Software-as-a-Service solutions, such as Microsoft’s SKYPE for Business for voice communications have been part of this evolution as well. As part of this project, activities such as capacity planning and performance monitoring were being insourced from third party vendors and taken over by the NetOps team. The need for accurate, end-to-end visibility to support service assurance became a priority to meet these needs. This was deemed an essential part of a successful migration given the increased complexity of a multi-cloud environment.

The company was facing staffing shortfalls during high-traffic annual tax filing periods, which was a critical time in their financial calendar. The Network Operations (NetOps) team was short of in-demand subject matter experts due to staff promotions, transfers, departures, and vacation schedules. Despite engaging NETSCOUT for regularly scheduled nGeniusONE knowledge transfer sessions, the team was still short-handed. The company’s technology landscape was also getting more complex, involving third-party providers and cloud delivery platforms that occasionally experienced performance anomalies that NetOps needed to triage. The company needed to find an innovative way to maximize the use, and extend the value, of the nGeniusONE platform to monitor and analyze new applications that were regularly added by the company’s business units.

The financial services company, with a customer base spanning the United States and abroad, was under tremendous pressure to ensure service availability and uptime for customers and employees twenty-four hours a day. Any downtime or performance issues with the bank’s critical applications such as online banking applications, brokerage applications, or small business management services would adversely impact the business. Internally, tens of thousands of bank employees are home workers, and depend on the VPN service to access the corporate network. On several occasions, round trip delay and jitter would increase to more than 200 ms for soft phone services and other applications running over the VPN tunnel. Investigating this issue, and countless others, fully occupied IT staff, who spent significant time troubleshooting production impacting application and server issues that didn’t necessarily stem from network issues. Without visibility into the real-time or historical performance of applications and servers, unacceptable delays were introduced into the fault isolation process.

The university was experiencing slow responsiveness in its application services, affecting email and other collaborative tools used by students and faculty. These tools were essential for class registration, accessing schedules, turning in assignments, disseminating messages and emergency notifications, as well as making tuition payments and conducting recruitment. The complexity of the network, spanning multiple campuses, left IT uncertain about the source of the problem. Without much needed intelligence and traffic insights, the IT team was unable to determine if the issue was in the campus networks, the WAN MPLS links or the services hosted at the main data center.

The university was undergoing a data center transformation, including virtualization and high-speed connectivity. However, their legacy network performance monitoring (NPM) tool was not up to the task of supporting this strategic initiative. The NPM tool had limited visibility due to its use of a NetFlow-focused data source, making collaboration nearly impossible due to the lack of integration between data and voice monitoring tools. Additionally, the troubleshooting processes were reportedly cumbersome and slow, which delayed resolution to application and network performance issues. With the university’s data center transformation including plans for VMware ESX hypervisor infrastructure, Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) software-defined networking (SDN), and cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 services, there was a need for a new NPM tool that could support these IT transformation activities, while meeting firm budget guidelines.

The IT department at Instituto Politécnico Nacional, one of Mexico’s largest public universities, was facing frequent web services outages in the student and staff portals, which negatively impacted the end-user experience. Symptoms included network slowness, web pages not loading, and total site downtime. Disconnected point tools showed parts of the problem, but couldn’t provide end-to-end visibility in order to identify the root cause. The university’s IT team recognized the opportunity to become more proactive in finding and resolving problems in order to improve the student’s digital experience and better support the educational mission of the institution.

The Board of Education (BOE) for a Canadian city was facing challenges due to the addition of new schools, which increased network traffic and links to IT Data Centers, potentially resulting in oversubscribed links. The BOE's IT team identified a need for an updated network capacity management solution. Furthermore, managing student populations posed information security challenges, and the BOE’s IT Security team oversees cybersecurity of the school system’s network and resources. The Network Operations team approached NETSCOUT regarding the need to solve potential data center and network link oversubscription via coordinated capacity planning.

The U.S. grocery chain was under pressure to secure and protect the wireless infrastructure across thousands of stores and ensure compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. The existing in-house wireless tools lacked the capabilities that would enable IT to comply with these stringent rules. Failure to meet PCI DSS mandates carried the risk of millions of dollars in fines, not to mention the potential of damaging the grocer’s highly respected brand. The company also wanted to secure their wireless networks against rogue access points to protect customer cell phones from the risk of being hacked or having personal data stolen. Beyond exposure to hacking, the company required service assurance for its network in order to ensure that wireless intrusion protection and detection systems were constantly connected. Also, IT needed remote troubleshooting capabilities because flying personnel to distant locations wasn’t always feasible or cost-effective.

The national retail chain was facing network congestion that was causing service degradations, severely impacting employee productivity and customer services. The IT team was unable to quickly identify the root cause of the issues. Unauthorized use of applications on the company’s network also presented security risks for the business. The company was unaware that employees were using thin clients for personal use, streaming video during work hours, causing a spike in traffic and degradation across the system.

The manufacturer was facing frequent issues with their Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network, which connects their data center to over 50 remote manufacturing and warehouse locations. Their existing tools did not provide the necessary visibility into the network to identify what was consuming the bandwidth and causing intermittent disruptions. This lack of visibility was causing increased reports of application access issues from their remote locations, and the IT team was losing valuable time trying to pinpoint the cause. The IT team needed a solution that would provide visibility into their MPLS network and help them quickly and effectively troubleshoot problems.

The UK financial services leader was experiencing business growth which necessitated data center expansion. This expansion led to an increase in network traffic and cybersecurity risks. The bank's IT organization had to manage these challenges while also working collaboratively with the cybersecurity team to ensure visibility into wire traffic for all their monitoring needs. The bank also uses an external provider to assist with network operations management. The cybersecurity team had deployed various third-party solutions in the data center environment. To maximize the efficiency of these cybersecurity platforms, the bank required network packet broker technology capable of filtering and forwarding traffic to the appropriate cybersecurity and/or monitoring system for analysis.

The International stock exchange was experiencing slowdowns and disruptions in several of their business applications, like Web services, Citrix, and backend databases. Simultaneously, issues were impacting the application services used on their trading floor, such as FIX and ITCH. The importance of a properly operating trading floor can’t be understated, where the difference in response time of only milliseconds can mean millions in global currencies. The IT team had long been strong proponents of performance monitoring tools to help troubleshoot the source of such problems. Their existing tool offered limited application analysis, which while helpful when they first started using it years ago, now lacked depth of analysis, real-time monitoring, and key details to pinpoint the true root cause of these disruptions.

The financial services company lacked comprehensive visibility into network and application performance in the data center, at their multiple branch offices and third-party affiliate locations, as well as to their cloud-based services. This limited their ability to investigate complex, ongoing problems. They also wanted to get ahead of issues to avoid customer impact. The IT team wanted end-to-end visibility into their wire data so that they could baseline and historically trend data to understand normal application performance, as well as proactively detect degradations in network, voice, and application performance. Specific areas of concern were external SaaS tools for Customer Resource Management, such as Salesforce, which they rely on for critical business operations, and VoIP services that are used for internal and external communication. Additionally, they had a custom application that was critical to the business, which ran in a Citrix environment. It was of great importance to be able to understand the performance and availability of the custom application, the Citrix service, and their underlying dependencies at all times.

The Civilian Government Agency was facing several challenges in delivering services to residents across a geographically vast region. The agency operators relied heavily on Cisco IP voice technology for their daily activities, and any delay, echo, or other impairments could compromise service delivery. The agency had more than 500 remote sites that the IT team was responsible for monitoring, all of which were reliant on high-quality voice performance. Local IT support at these remote locations was limited, meaning overall UC, application, and network monitoring fell on centralized IT resources. The agency was also expanding a rollout of a Microsoft Skype for Business platform for enterprise use, and visibility into this cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) would require technology that was not in the IT team’s current toolset.

A tier one operator is preparing to rollout VoLTE services nationwide. However, the operator is concerned about the readiness of the network and engineering teams for the anticipated traffic volumes. The operator is also worried about the difficulty of tracking the quality of VoLTE services on a national scale. There are fears that any negative publicity will slow the uptake of VoLTE services and erode brand equity. Additionally, latent performance issues could result in project delays or require rollback.

The MSO was facing a challenge with their Video on Demand (VoD) system. An error occurred with the movie poster server that delivers information to the set-top box. Subscribers would select a preferred title and receive something else, causing them to abandon the movie within the first few minutes of the rental. The MSO lacked direct visibility into the VoD experience from a subscriber’s point-of-view and wanted to understand why so many VoD views were abandoned within the first few minutes of purchase. VoD delivery is a complex, multi-step process. A typical user’s journey includes connecting, authenticating and finally accessing the chosen content. Behind the scenes, thousands of packets are passed between multiple servers and during these exchanges, any number of issues can occur.

Network operators must have precise visibility into subscriber roaming performance issues for home and partnered network elements in order to proactively assess performance. In one market at 3:00 a.m. local time, a large US service provider detected traffic failures for 100% of inbound roaming subscribers. The challenge was to quickly identify the scope, impact, and root cause of the issue.

During a high-profile sporting event, a North American Carrier Service Provider (CSP) was faced with the challenge of ensuring a superior experience for its subscribers, particularly corporate and VIP accounts. The event attracted thousands of attendees and hundreds of visitors to the city, creating additional demands on the CSP's brand. The challenge was to proactively manage subscribers' behavior and experience in near real-time to protect the carrier's reputation.

One of the largest carrier service providers (CSPs) in North America has been investing in multiple vendors and their separate service assurance products for years. Each of these vendors provides a partial view of the network, but complete end-to-end visibility is absent. The carrier has been spending millions each year on service assurance products alone. It has become a heavy burden to the CSP on both CAPEX and OPEX to expand, maintain and operate the disparate products from these many vendors. The CSP made the strategic decision to consolidate vendors for service assurance products in order to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. They needed one single solution for their complex network that delivers end-to-end visibility and improved Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

As part of the utility’s ongoing effort to improve the customer experience and drive greater efficiency, smart grid technology, including smart meters were being rolled out to all customers. Because smart meters must be able to transfer information to the smart grid data center effectively and efficiently, reliability and performance of the Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is absolutely imperative. Slow connections were creating delays in data collection, which meant customers couldn’t get real-time meter information on their mobile app or web portal. As the utility plans to roll out more time-based services and variable billing, data performance will be vital. In order to meet the growing data demands of the business, the utility’s IT team faced the challenge of proactively monitoring and troubleshooting its networks. The existing solution, which was cumbersome and time-consuming, only provided reactive troubleshooting and had no ability to triage problems once intermittent symptoms ceased. IT needed the ability to perform forensics on past smart grid performance issues in order to determine the root cause after the fact, allowing them to make proactive corrections and prevent future problems. In addition, IT needed a solution to monitor and manage voice-over IP (VoIP) in the utility’s call centers for real-time issue discovery and problem solving.

The pharmaceutical company plays a crucial role supporting a national program that provides government-subsidized pharmacy transactions for eligible recipients. The company serves as a processing intermediary between drug stores, insureds, and the government. The company’s network operations are based at two data centers, and they are critical for keeping the benefits program up and running. Any network latency that delays POS transactions can also jeopardize patients’ abilities to fill their prescriptions at agreed-to government rates. In the past, when network-impacting issues occurred, the company’s Network Engineering team used a post-event troubleshooting approach based on a legacy forensic packet capture tool. As this forensic tool approached end-of-life, Network Engineering saw an opportunity to improve their network monitoring approach and enhance benefits program service delivery efficiency.

The company’s Security Operations (SecOps) team faced new business and compliance management challenges that were surpassing current IT toolset capabilities. The New York State government had enacted requirements upon any financial institutions that required those businesses operating in NY to implement cybersecurity measures, report data breaches, identify whether the threat traveled past the point of initial infiltration, and provide associated network packet captures as further evidence of effective forensic security analysis used to successfully troubleshoot the breach. The company had to deploy a complete solution in an accelerated timeframe in order to meet a State-specified deadline for organizational compliance; otherwise, the business would be subject to government fines and adverse impacts to brand reputation. As part of strategic business initiatives, the company decided to move certain data center workloads to cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure (Azure) platforms, as well as newly added Equinix co-location facilities. However, when an Equinix co-lo facility reported an outage with Azure services, the CISO learned the company’s existing IT toolsets lacked visibility into this new hybrid cloud environment necessary for troubleshooting and remediating performance anomalies, so that business services could be quickly restored for customers and users.

The European insurance company was planning a network migration which highlighted network performance issues and blind spots. With the increasing adoption of mobile and web platforms by insurance customers, the IT team's need for real-time monitoring was also increasing. The company's IT team was managing a multi-tier network environment used for delivering business services to agency representatives working at regional offices, as well as corporate-level users. They had concerns about their long-time third-party technology's ability to support the company's digital transformation. They were also concerned about how potential network monitoring tool limitations would impact the success of a network upgrade designed to offer increased performance necessary for supporting more company applications, devices, users, and customers.

The insurance company was facing long-standing Unified Communications (UC) performance challenges, such as dropped calls, which frustrated both agents and IT employees. Their existing tools could not visualize the UC traffic traversing the infrastructure, and troubleshooting processes were resource-intensive and lengthy. The company needed a solution that could easily integrate into their existing business processes and technology environment without requiring significant architectural changes, extensive user training, or a major learning curve for generating UC monitor views, relevant reports, or troubleshooting workflows.

The financial services company was facing visibility limitations into their financial business service performance. They had been monitoring the perimeter of the wide area network (WAN) and primary data center operations using NETSCOUT InfiniStream® appliances to visualize those links and nGeniusONE analytics to assess performance. However, the Network Operations (NetOps) team wanted to improve visibility into, and monitoring of, business services supporting customers’ financial transactions. They were convinced their business service monitoring goals would only be met by deploying new data sources to provide visibility inside company data centers and into banking & internet cores.

The government agency was experiencing an increase in remote users, which corresponded to increased traffic volumes accessing agency resources in the data center. This was causing network traffic and bandwidth issues in key enterprise areas tied to remote users accessing applications. These changes in volume were presenting significant performance and availability challenges for the IT staff. The agency was also seeing employees, connected to the enterprise network over the VPN, streaming music, TV, and movie services like Netflix, Comcast, and YouTube, which were consuming a large amount of the bandwidth.

The government-operated toll road authority oversees a roadway network that annually supports millions of residential, business, and visitors traveling throughout the region. The authority has distinguished itself by executing a number of infrastructure projects on schedule across the region, as well as transitioning to a toll plaza network that relies on the use of transponders and vehicle stickers to process automatic fare payments. This state-of-the-art system reduces the delays associated with manual collection of cash-based transactions at toll booths. By largely eliminating manual toll booth collections, the authority has improved the flow of traffic across regional roadways and improved the quality of the driving experience as a result. However, automated toll collection depends on scanning vehicle transponders and windshield-mounted stickers, matching them to registered customers, and successfully processing payment billing and collection. This is a complex technology service, and disruptions can be challenging to pinpoint.

The insurance company decided to upgrade their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to an Oracle platform to enhance customer experience and agent efficiency. However, after the deployment, the IT team began receiving complaints about slow response times between Oracle insurance applications and agency devices. The IT team lacked visibility into the new Oracle CRM environment necessary for real-time monitoring, troubleshooting, and restoring responsive operations for thousands of their regional insurance agent offices.

The IT team of a large-scale government agency was facing numerous challenges with a heavily used mobile communications application. Field users reported that the process of sending an email for encrypted transactions was taking more than 60 seconds, which was prompting those frustrated agents to repeatedly contact the IT service desk for resolution. Fifty percent of application transactions were being categorized as slow. The SaaS provider hosting the app was a company operating on another continent, further complicating efficient troubleshooting. As this encrypted app was also highly used by government agency management, improving real-time monitoring of this application’s performance represented a high-profile issue for the IT team. They also recognized the importance of gaining visibility into all their applications in a more holistic, cost-effective manner.