August 23, 2023

Introducing Cisco ThousandEyes

Chris Day
Principal Consultant - Infrastructure Solutions at Data#3

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of attending the Data#3 Juice IT tradeshows across the country, where I had the opportunity to reconnect with many of our customers in person. During my conversations on the exhibition floor, I was surprised to find that ThousandEyes, despite the buzz surrounding it at Cisco Live, seemed to have a low profile. If you’re already familiar with this solution, feel free to skip ahead – but if you’re wondering what ThousandEyes is and why you should care, read on. 

Assuring digital experience across every network 

The Internet is effectively the enterprise network for most organisations today. That’s why outages cause so much disruption, resulting in poor user experiences and potentially crippling business operations. Imagine you are an organisation reliant on web applications to serve customers. Service disruptions can have far-reaching consequences, for both your bottom line and reputation.  

It’s no longer enough to have a high-performing enterprise network within the traditional corporate perimeter. If you are going to provide assurance for your customers and a great digital experience for users, you need visibility across the Internet and into the cloud. 

Cisco ThousandEyes enables you to take control of your digital experiences across the internet, the cloud, and SaaS. It provides continuous monitoring across both internal and external networks, as well as hop-by-hop visibility into the network underlay, including path and performance metrics and SaaS app performance. The outcome is faster detection of network faults and intermittent performance issues that are often tricky to pin down. 

Chief benefits 

a) Better network performance. 

b) Improved network visibility. 

c) Effective incident response and troubleshooting. 

d) Seamless cloud and hybrid network management. 

How it works 

ThousandEyes is part of Cisco’s extensive portfolio of solutions. It uses cloud providers plus Cisco’s thousands of data centres across the world to monitor application paths wherever they originate. It combines Internet and WAN visibility, browser synthetics, end-user monitoring, and Internet insights. 

 Agent-based monitoring: 

Comprehensive network monitoring: 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Q1: Is ThousandEyes suitable for organisations of all sizes? 

A1: Absolutely! ThousandEyes is useful for any organisation that needs analytics from their end users to the cloud. It’s delivered as a SaaS and you only pay for the test you want to run. The licensing model uses credits where different types of tests require an amount of credits based on the complexity and frequency of the test. 

Q2: Can ThousandEyes monitor both internal and external networks? 

A2: Yes, ThousandEyes provides visibility into both internal networks and external networks, including cloud services and third-party networks. 

Q3: How does ThousandEyes enhance incident response and troubleshooting? 

A3: ThousandEyes offers comprehensive visibility into the network path allowing for quick isolation of issues, and provides the evidence needed for you to escalate to your service providers for faster resolution. ThousandEyes can automatically surface meaningful incident reports, so IT and Ops teams can rapidly respond before they impact your customers.  

Don’t get caught with your apps down

In today’s interconnected world, maintaining a resilient and secure network infrastructure is imperative. ThousandEyes helps you assure the performance of your business-critical apps – even when you do not own the underlying transport, services, or applications. 

Take a look at our short demos, or experience the power of ThousandEyes for yourself with a free trial.