Visual Networks: Tools Are Strategic (Updated/Corrected)Visual Networks: Tools Are Strategic (Updated/Corrected)

A longtime test-and-measurement player offers a higher-level view of network performance, and says customers are responding.

I had a chance to catch up with some execs from the former Fluke Networks, which recently rebranded itself as Visual Networks*, and the part of our conversation that was most unexpected was their assertion that they make many of their tool sales at the CIO/VP/Director level of the enterprise.

Those of us who have been kicking around awhile think of Fluke as your basic handheld telephony measurement tool, and Visual as the company that revolutionized Service Level Agreement verification in the 90s by pitching their product to the enterprise as a way for the buyer to beat up on their service provider by delivering statistics that could verify when providers were or (more usefully) were not meeting their terms of service for WAN offerings.

Doesn't seem like the kind of thing you need to bring the CIO into, when you're choosing the tools for doing this verification. But in talking with Belinda Yung-Rubke, Director of Marketing for Visual Network Systems and Scott Allen, VP of Marketing, it became clear that the recasting of Fluke as part of the Visual family was part of this higher-level focus. And in addition to a higher-level approach to the enterprise buyer, Visual is also taking the higher-level approach to the network performance view that they provide.

Like many tools providers, Visual is moving toward a model that emphasizes presenting the end user's view of the network's behavior, rather than delivering raw statistics. They call this vision "Enterprise Service Intelligence," and they execute it by aggregating the network performance data that's gathered, bringing it into the Visual Performance Manager application, and then making this information available to event management and executive dashboard interfaces via a web services API that they have developed, called VPM Connex. The diagram below illustrates how this works in automating processes and business support (via the help desk):

But is this really the kind of purchase that is likely to be made at the C-level or by VPs or even directors? Belinda and Scott offered a long list of existing Global 2000 customers, and were able to go on the record as saying that in at least one account, SunTrust Bank, the CIO was involved in making the purchase decision.

The reason why this should be a higher-level decision is that the top IT executives need to know what their end users' experience is at any given moment. Belind likened Visual's VPM to the GPS system in a car, and the CIO/VP as the driver. While lower-level interfaces give you the maps and tools, what the higher-level technology executives want is a system that gives you the driver's view of the experience.

Though the VPM platform isn't specifically aimed at real-time applications like voice and video, it can be used in such deployments; and we saw at VoiceCon Orlando this past spring that interest in tools--especially in tools that give you a more comprehensive picture of the network--seems to be growing among the cadre of communications professional. I expect to see such interest continue at the re-named Enterprise Connect 2011 in Orlando next February. --- * I misstated the corporate changes involving Fluke and Visual. Here's what I got from the company's PR: