IMPACT BRIEF | 1 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com

EventApplication-aware network performance management (ANPM) vendor LiveAction announced the addition of a cloud performance and user experience product to its platform. This new product, LiveAction for User Experience (LiveUX), will provide insight into the performance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and public cloud applications. LiveUX relies on distributed virtual, physical, and cloud-based agents that send test traffic to various cloud-based applications. These tests include full HTTP tests as well as DNS tests for DNS latency, ICMP ping for network latency, and TCPtraceroute for hop-by-hop segmentation of performance characteristics. LiveUX analyzes the results of the tests to characterize cloud application performance and user experience and identify the root cause of performance problems. LiveUX allows IT operations to isolate performance problems to either internal infrastructure, external networks (e.g., the public Internet), or the cloud provider.

LiveUX will initially focus on performance management of web-based applications, and it will expand to other application types later. It provides insight into response times, delays, and packet loss. LiveUX is an integrated component of the vendor’s core ANPM platform, which is primarily a NetFlow analytics tool. With this integration, IT operations can see LiveUX performance analysis in the context of an enterprise’s overall IT operations. For instance, NetFlow analytics can help the enterprise understand if SaaS applications are competing with internal applications for bandwidth. And the ability of LiveAction’s core platform to configure Cisco Quality of Service (QoS) would further allow network operations to take corrective action from the same management platform.

ContextEnterprises are moving applications to the cloud, whether IT likes it or not. Simplicity is a key value proposition for many SaaS providers, so it’s often a trivial matter for an enterprise to get a service up and running, even without IT’s involvement. But while it may be simple to get cloud services set up, IT managers are well aware that managing the performance and availability of those applications is far from easy. First, visibility is limited for external cloud resources hosted by a third party. Furthermore, enterprises typically access those resources via an unmanaged public Internet connection. Unlike an MPLS network, the Internet does not offer service-level agreements, and a broadband provider is not going to deliver much in the way of traffic engineering and performance visibility.

This cloud performance management reality is evident in ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) research. Recent unpublished EMA research on cloud adoption and shadow IT revealed that 42% of enterprises find performance management of cloud-based applications and services to be more difficult than performance management of applications hosted in their own data centers. Additional EMA research shows that 52% of enterprises are seeing public- and hybrid-cloud projects drive their current priorities in monitoring and managing networks and networked application performance. 1 Only 26% of enterprises believe that their current management tools provide adequate visibility for monitoring and troubleshooting external public cloud resources. And 36% of enterprises said their network management vendors need to improve specific support for cloud environments. Given this reality, IT organizations need to expand and adapt their monitoring and management tools.

1 EMA, “Managing Networks in the Age of Cloud, SDN, and Big Data: Network Management Megatrends 2014,” April 2014.

LiveUX Product from LiveAction Extends Performance Management to SaaS and the Public Cloud

IMPACT BRIEF | 2 ©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com

EMA PerspectiveLiveAction joins a growing number of vendors that have recognized the criticality of cloud performance management. Like most network performance management technologies, the company’s flagship LiveAction platform is designed for managing the performance of networks and applications in managed environments. However, cloud applications and services, for the most part, reside outside managed environments. The new LiveUX gives IT operations an option for regaining visibility into these cloud-based services.

LiveUX has a flexible architecture, especially at the agent layer. IT operations can deploy software or hardware agents at the edge of their network to send test traffic to the Internet and the cloud. LiveAction is also offering “global” agents, which are appliances operated by the vendor in various data centers across the world. LiveUX users can run tests from these global agents to gain a more global view of cloud performance. For instance, they can run tests against a SaaS provider using both a global agent and a local agent and analyze the variation for more granular root-cause analysis. All of these deployment options serve up the data from these performance tests to LiveAction’s main analytics platform, which can then provide reporting and alerting to instantly answer the IT operations teams’ most critical questions, such as, “Is this my problem or my service provider’s problem?”

Enterprises will continue to push applications to the cloud. EMA’s recent unpublished cloud adoption research indicates that roughly half of enterprises have migrated between 20% and 30% of their application workloads to the cloud. As this migration continues, IT organizations will need to rethink their performance management and monitoring tool stack. Their existing tools are probably adequate for the legacy managed environments, but these new unmanaged infrastructure elements require an expansion of visibility. LiveAction is answering the call with its new user experience product, LiveUX.

About EMA Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help EMA’s clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 3173.061615