NetBeez testing enterprise networks
I spoke with the folks from NetBeez quite a while ago. They were making the case that the networks that support organization's workloads are getting ever more complex, are dealing with a growing number of end point devices, and an ever higher level of virtualization. Highly distributed applications, they would point out, rely on the network. Network performance problems, they would say, can be difficult to find and difficult to resolve.
TechRepublic
Furthermore, NetBeez believes that network management and monitoring tools that were designed and built during an earlier time are ill-equipped to deal with the growing complexity underlying today's network environments.
NetBeez believes that a workable approach is to build upon what existing monitoring solutions do by running tests that exercise network components and verify that the network infrastructure and services are available and accessible to users.
The company's product runs tests from users' systems to various applications and application services to build an ongoing, real-time view of what is happening, then makes it possible for an organization's networking team to address issues before they become problems.
To prove their point, they offer success stories in which customers have found and resolved web application performance issues such as intermittent connectivity issues and problems with tools designed to filter network access.
After viewing a demonstration of NetBeez's product, it became clear that a network engineer would find useful the data the tool gathers and how it is presented. What also became clear is that much of what this tool does can be done using other tools or manual procedures. But considering how busy support staffs are, a tool that does all of this monitoring, data analysis and presentation of the data would be quite useful.