Unified Packet Visibility Improves IT Effectiveness With NETSCOUT’s Software-driven Packet Broker Architecture
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- nGenius® 5010 Packet Flow Switch
- Packet Flow eXtender (PFX) software
- nGeniusONE® service assurance platform
- InfiniStream® appliances
Tech Stack
- Network Traffic Monitoring
- Packet De-duplication
- NetFlow Generation
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
This U.S. Financial Services Company focuses on offering a broad set of leasing and financing options for vehicles, payment protection, and insurance products. More than 3,000 employees across multiple regional offices, customer service centers, and sales and service branch offices are dedicated to supporting tens of thousands of customers every day. With managed assets in excess of $100 billion, their enterprise network is critical in supporting customer sales and services throughout the U.S.
The Challenge
The Financial Services Company had selected the nGeniusONE service assurance platform and InfiniStream appliances to address quality and performance issues impacting their unified communications services at their distributed contact centers. As the IT team was implementing the equipment, they encountered several issues with the network traffic being forwarded by their third-party vendor’s packet brokers to the InfiniStream appliances. Trying to resolve the issues related to packet de-duplication became next to impossible due to product inefficiencies combined with poor customer support and insufficient knowledge from the equipment vendor. Recognizing that NETSCOUT® offered a broad selection of packet flow switch solutions, the IT staff accelerated their schedule for a technology refresh to meet their visibility needs.
The Solution
With the goal to upgrade and enhance their network traffic visibility for their service assurance needs in the contact centers, the Financial Services Company chose the software-based nGenius Packet Flow System (PFS), consisting of nGenius 5010 series packet flow switches in combination with Packet Flow eXtender (PFX) software. For several reasons, this was a superior choice to the existing implementation. The nGenius PFS solution met or exceeded all performance benchmarks when it came to aggregation, replication, and load balancing. It performed de-duplication as promised, which in turn enhanced the accuracy of the monitoring tools. It offered a unique Service Port feature that leveraged SPAN port traffic feeding the nGenius packet flow switch and, based on a configuration design, sent just the right traffic to the right tool at the right time. Changes to a Service Port only apply to that monitoring tool; thus, IT stakeholders from voice, network, and security were able to easily optimize the data stream necessary for their needs. It delivered NetFlow generation capability using the PFX software, which reduced the workload on their Cisco routers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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