Challenge
Secure & Smooth Transition to NaaS
Product
Eagle-i
Business Summary
The Network-as-a-Service model represents a potentially invaluable solution to businesses aspiring to deliver more efficient and flexible IT operations. However, companies undergoing conversion to NaaS must ensure that correct monitoring tools are in place ahead of transition. This will ensure systems are performing to expected levels and allow validation of SLAs promised by providers. Remasys’ Eagle-i service provides a unique capability – to effectively monitor NaaS deployments and operations during and after transition, and deliver significant insight and value to NaaS customers.
Intro
As businesses continue to invest significant resources in digital transformations, IT organisations are under increasing pressure to boost operational and management efficiency of their network infrastructures. And the introduction of powerful technologies such as AI and the IoT require networks that enable efficient and successful scaling.
The Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) business model is a potential solution to these pressures, providing efficient and scalable network operations through an on-demand provisioning model. Although NaaS has been demonstrated to provide greater flexibility and even performance gains, businesses must be aware of the potential issues surrounding network performance visibility. Transitioning from an in-house solution to NaaS can result in a loss of key monitoring metrics. Businesses left with a major blind spot prevents validation of providers SLAs and blocks understanding of performance impact on end users.
NaaS monitoring often an afterthought
According to Cisco, potential NaaS customers should “negotiate with their provider for network visibility to monitor performance and gauge the quality of service”. This advice follows the experiences of numerous early-adopters of NaaS, who following transitions, found themselves unable to measure the network performance metrics of their NaaS solutions. Best practice monitoring was prevented while businesses were also unable to validate SLA agreements with their NaaS providers.
Currently, most businesses running in-house network infrastructures use a network monitoring solution delivered alongside their hardware. But once they move their infrastructure out of house, direct access to underlying monitoring points is lost. When monitoring solutions are used, the vast majority of network performance solutions are delivered as software and not as a managed service. Businesses attempting to scale down in-house IT operations paradoxically require additional monitoring resources to support the outsourcing of their network infrastructure.
Our Solution
Remasys’ Eagle-i measures performance impact on the end user before and after NaaS transition. Our technology agnostic, agentless solution delivers monitoring of both NaaS and in-house network infrastructures (such as MPLS) as a managed service. Eagle-i uses “through-the-glass” screen-based interaction with an underlying system at an end user monitoring point, instead of relying on an inflexible agent injection methodology. Organisations are able to hold NaaS providers to account on the terms of their agreed SLAs, using the performance metrics provided by the Eagle-i dashboard as evidence. Alongside the technology agnostic functionality, Eagle-i requires no reconfiguration, as it is unaffected by any scaling or changes of a monitored NaaS solution.
Remasys’ monitoring experts work with businesses to understand their critical user journeys (i.e. accessing ERP applications) before automating them using Eagle-i. User journeys are then run 24/7 at scheduled intervals, collecting vital performance and availability metrics that are of high value to businesses. In addition, Eagle-i is delivered as managed service, aligning with the model of NaaS for businesses looking to shift network and performance responsibility to an external provider.
RAPID, SECURE DEPLOYMENT PROCESS
Eagle-i’s agentless methodology requires no code integration into core applications.
A typical Eagle-i monitoring solution will involve:
- Automation of selected end-user journeys that utilise core organisational applications (such as accessing ERP applications)
- Tests completion every 5 minutes, 24/7 monitoring performance and availability of systems. Results delivered in centralised, web-based GUI.
- Managed Service
