In 2020, Cisco acquired the cloud intelligence firm ThousandEyes, Inc., which allows companies to have a complete view of their IT ecosystems. With this acquisition, Cisco clients are capable of see each their inside and exterior providers.
I just lately 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 Techniques Engineering. They kindly supplied to reply some questions I steadily 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 might in all probability spend a few hours on that. At a excessive degree, although, there are a few components. Initially, it’s the energy and relevance of the know-how. As we see clients spend money on issues like hybrid work, cloud/SaaS, and SDWAN, and even enhancing their very own clients’ digital expertise, they turn into increasingly more depending on networks and environments they don’t personal or management. And that’s ThousandEyes’ candy spot — delivering larger visibility into environments clients don’t personal or management.
Invoice: I utterly agree, James. We will 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 straight 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 instances the place we’re actually robust — hybrid work, cloud/SaaS, community modernization, and buyer DX — are issues that the majority clients are coping with at the moment.
James: Different causes embrace the pure synergy we’ve got with different Cisco applied sciences, the simplicity and time to worth of the answer, and we actually can’t overlook to say tradition. All of us strategy what we do with a relentless deal with buyer success. An awesome product that’s simple to deploy and use makes that simpler to do, however our entire staff is targeted 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 instances 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: Properly, 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 revolutionary methods of delivering extra worth. We began by prioritizing making it simpler for our clients to deploy ThousandEyes and acquire larger 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, simple, and cost-effective to attain visibility with ThousandEyes. We’ve additionally carried out some nice issues by offering visibility into collaboration providers like WebEx, and there’s wonderful synergy and integration with AppDynamics that drive our Full Stack Observability providing. The thrilling half is that that is only 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, all the time obtain data from you on when and why my electronic mail doesn’t work.
James: You’ve heard me say, “We’re the authority on the web.” Mainly, we are able to use our huge knowledge set — billions of metrics per day — to shortly floor points or issues with ISPs or SaaS functions that aren’t remoted to only one buyer. This enables clients, and us, to instantly know when there are issues on the web that can intrude with functions or providers we depend on. What else, Invoice?
Invoice: Properly, I believe it’s vital to grasp what you’ll do with this data. In order James stated, not solely will we inform you if there’s a downside with a SaaS software, but in addition what areas of the world are being impacted. Equally, for ISPs, if there’s a community concern on the web, we are going to present what goal networks and providers are affected, in addition to what areas are impacted. Some people might say, “Properly, so what? I can’t do something to repair these issues.” This could be true, however they shortly understand that the period of time and assets saved by understanding this proper up entrance is super. They not spend hours attempting to troubleshoot an issue, solely to seek out out they will’t repair it as a result of the problem is with another person. Consequently, they may also be way more proactive with their clients and workers when service disruptions which may be outdoors their management happen. We steadily detect issues hours earlier than distributors submit them to their standing pages — even earlier than customers begin complaining. {Our capability} right here relies on precise knowledge, not simply complaints.
Q: As I’m listening to you guys, plainly ThousandEyes’ attain is expansive when it comes to who will profit from it. You discuss community path visibly that an engineer may care about, in addition to increased degree outage data from a possible strategic associate that an govt may need 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 believe you’re proper, although, Cliff. Not solely is ThousandEyes one thing that has super worth for engineering or specialist groups, but in addition for IT operations. Once more, it’s nice at figuring out the fault area, so it’s very useful for operations in that sense. Understanding the place the issue is offers the flexibility to keep away from the blame recreation and “warfare room” calls with dozens of individuals. Even at increased ranges of a corporation, the information we gather 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 vital 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 knowledge and perception it might present.
Q: This has been nice, guys. I actually admire it. What’s subsequent for you and the ThousandEyes staff?
James: Thanks, Cliff. We love and admire the partnership! I consider the longer term may be very vibrant for us. We’re rising, and we’re investing. Our product staff is doing wonderful issues, not solely innovating with completely different Cisco applied sciences, but in addition enhancing the general high quality of the information we gather. We’re performing some wonderful work in creating intelligence to assist clients make predictive networking selections based mostly on the information we’re gathering. It’s actually thrilling. Total, I consider we are able to present up in new methods for our clients. We might help them perceive the distinctive challenges introduced in how IT is evolving and in the end assist them be extra environment friendly and efficient in servicing their clients and workers.
If you happen to’d prefer to study extra about ThousandEyes, please discover the platform and contemplate a free trial.
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