The Network Application Performance Analysis (NAPA) portfolio comprises four new products, drawing on instrumentation already available within Cisco’s own hardware but also standards-based information from other vendors’ kit. Its avowed intent is to close the visibility gap between network performance management and application performance management products, according to Clive Foreman, VP of the San Jose, California-based company’s Network Management Technology Group.
The four new offerings are described differently, depending on how they are most likely to be delivered. The Application Assurance Solution, which is for troubleshooting when an app is having performance problems, and the Network Planning Solution, whose name is self-explanatory, are both OEMed from Bethesda, Maryland-based OPNET Technologies Inc and, as ad hoc functions, will typically be delivered as services to all but the very largest, most tech-savvy enterprises with a DIY approach.
Then there is the Bandwidth Quality Analysis Service, OEMed from Dublin, Ireland-based Corvil Ltd, which carries out link bandwidth and QoS analysis by drawing on data provided by the network. In that case, it draws on the company’s ISR branch office router specially configured in BQA mode, in order to produce the data. It can also get the data from a dedicated Corvil appliance Cisco is OEMing for the purpose, said Foreman.
Again, though there is no reason why an end customer could not buy the BQA server software and run it themselves, the service epithet suggests that it will mainly be delivered by a third party, who presumably will have come in to fit the BQA blades into a customer’s ISRs or deploy the appliances around their network.
Lastly, there is the Performance Visibility Manager (PVM), which is a software package OEMed from Sunrise, Florida-based Trendium Inc. It collects app response time (ART) data from multiple sources of network information, to provide both real-time and historical views of app performance, with summaries and optional drill-downs, said Foreman. As such, it is perhaps the offering most obviously suited to a product sale, though it too can be delivered as a service.
The sources of the network information are multiple. Firstly, there are the Cisco Network Analysis Modules (NAMs), deployed as blades in Catalyst 6500 switches and/or ISRs, which are essentially built-in probes collecting, among other things, RMON data.
Then there are the Netflow capability within Cisco’s IOS operating system, the IPSLA performance measurement capability within its devices, the BQA blades on ISRs and the Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR) technology, which is essentially deep packet inspection.
Beyond those Cisco-specific sources, there are the single Management Information Base (MIB) used by SNMP and the additional nine MIBs defined by the Remote Monitoring (RMON) protocol, which will mean that any network device supporting SNMP and MIB will be able to inform the NAPA tools. PVM currently only supports the Cisco sources, but will, over time, add the other instrumentations, while the other three tools are already heterogeneous in their data capture capabilities.
The multiple instrumentations within its kit (Netflow, NBAR, NAM and Resource Manager Essentials, or RME, for instance) show that Cisco has already been in network management for some time, as is only natural. However, until now it has played in this space specifically on its own hardware, and delivered the management capability as functionality its customers could themselves operate.
NAPA represents something of a departure, therefore, in that (1) the portfolio is services-led, albeit available as product for the most ambitious enterprises, and (2) the offering are designed from the outset to be heterogeneous, even if, in PVM’s case, that is a work in progress.
Cisco characterizes NAPA as something new to the market, bridging what it perceives as the gap between network and app performance analysis, and as such not really muscling in on anyone else’s market space.
That may be, but the announcement of NAPA will clearly be pored over by a number of performance analysis vendors. Foreman said NAPA, in no way, impinges on Network General Corp, whose Sniffer technology reigns supreme in protocol analysis for troubleshooting, though that rather overlooks the renascent company’s ambitions in app performance analysis. NAPA will certainly raise a few eyebrows at NetScout as well as, potentially, WildPackets and Network General.
Neil Walker, head of EMEA product marketing, said the real value add of the NAPA offer will be the fact that Cisco is shouldering all the integration costs.
When customers go out and buy performance analysis tools and have to integrate them into their existing network management infrastructures, for every dollar they spend on product there are another five on systems integration. We’re swallowing those costs.
