Viavi Observer Platform

The VIAVI Observer Platform is an advanced network performance management solution that provides real-time monitoring, analysis, and troubleshooting capabilities across traditional on-premises systems and diverse public, private and hybrid cloud network infrastructures. It is designed to cater to the evolving needs of modern IT environments, offering a robust set of features aimed at addressing the challenges associated with managing complex networks.

Fig 1 – VIAVI Observer Apex overview

Observer is a platform that consists of Apex an intuitive User Interface (UI) that includes a sophisticated and innovative End User Experience (EUE) real-time score. It also includes an overarching powerful and flexible set of reporting and analytics capabilities. Apex is fed by GigaStor, a physical or virtual appliance, which provides packet capture and metadata generation, and GigaFlow another physical or virtual appliance, which captures enriched flows.

At its core, the Observer Platform is a comprehensive network performance management solution. It integrates the various aspects of performance monitoring, converting complex data into actionable information tailored for proactive network issue resolution. It combines advanced end-user scoring, logical diagnostics, and intuitive workflows through packet capture and enriched flow data to provide actionable insights into network performance, application behaviour, and security posture. By storing all packet and flow data, Observer offers in-depth analysis necessary for thorough forensic investigations. It enables IT teams to quickly identify and address issues and implement corrective measures before any significant downtime occurs.

Customer Quotes

“On a war room on-line call with 50 people, posing the question “Did you Viavi it?” helped us get to the root cause of the problem.”
VP of Network Engineering, Large US based financial private investment firm

“I have found the Observer Platform to be an invaluable tool in diagnosing both application and network issues.”
Peter Young, Network Administrator, Home Office UK Ministerial Department

Designed as an integrated offering, the Observer Platform provides visibility into critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) through pre-defined workflows from high-level dashboards to service anomaly root cause. It allows IT teams to satisfy business goals and overcome challenges across the entire IT enterprise life cycle whether deploying new technologies, managing current resources, solving service anomalies, or optimising IT asset usage.

The VIAVI Observer Platform offers real-time visibility into network traffic, allowing IT teams to monitor performance metrics, application behaviour, and user activity as it happens. By capturing packets at various points within the network, Observer provides granular insights into traffic patterns, allowing for accurate analysis and troubleshooting of performance issues. Most if not all of analysis will be done working from Apex where the metadata is stored.

Observer Apex, the intuitive user interface, utilises a patented, machine learning driven End-User Experience (EUE) Scoring system that offers real-time insights into the performance of the overall IT environment. This feature enables IT teams to effectively link network activity with the actual impact on users, facilitating immediate understanding and response to network, client server and application issues. Observer Apex provides global IT service health and status awareness while, at the same time, integrating the various aspects of network performance management.

Observer provides a wide set of features for robust monitoring and troubleshooting in one platform. This includes UC Call Visualisation to trace call paths and pinpoint issues, deeper End-User Experience (EUE) Scoring for effective prioritisation of network problems, and Certificate Analysis for proactive security against non-compliant or expiring certificates. Additionally, through Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), Observer is able to recognise 4,300+ business and non-business applications/protocols. It also provides seamless visibility in Azure and AWS environments, facilitating efficient management across hybrid and multi-vendor setups. All this is accessible through a single user-interface.

While Observer’s primary use model is built around the identification and resolution of performance issues, the captured packet stores are useful for security teams who need to perform forensic-level analysis of suspicious or malicious traffic, or need to document what was accessed and exfiltrated. Also, cert analysis is useful for users focused on ensuring compliance with corporate policies and best practices. Observer is designed to scale seamlessly to meet the needs of organisations of all sizes and industries. Whether it’s a medium-sized business with a small number of locations or a large enterprise with a global network footprint, Observer can accommodate diverse deployment scenarios that allow cost-effective packet capture and analysis right down to individual branch level and scale to handle increasing data volumes and network complexity across cloud and on-premises.

In particular, Observer is closely integrated into Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud. Observer Apex, GigaStor, and GigaFlow can all be deployed in the cloud, on-premises or as a combination and are ALL available within AWS Marketplace. This flexibility allows for an optimised trade-off between network visibility and cost. For companies that have invested in Microsoft Azure, Observer can also ingest and analyse NSG flow logs.

Finally, security is a top priority for organisations in today’s threat landscape. The VIAVI Observer Platform includes robust security monitoring capabilities, with a particular emphasis on Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). This is important enough for Bloor to review the security capabilities of Observer Sentry in a separate InBrief report.

In an increasingly digital-first world the performance of customer facing applications can make the difference between business success and failure. Downtime and poor response times on applications can have a direct impact on the bottom line. Fifteen years ago, Amazon was already showing that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales, while Google found an extra 0.5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%. They have spent a huge amount of time and money to ensure they understand exactly how their infrastructure performs….and their business flourishes. All businesses need that same sort of capability (NPMD) solution that is ideal for maintaining peak performance of all IT services.

As infrastructures grow increasingly complex, spanning on-premises and cloud data centres with diverse compute, network, and storage components from various vendors, it has become more challenging to understand and correlate the impact of events in a timely and cost-effective manner. When asked about what he liked best about Observer, the Manager of Network Engineering, at a very large Healthcare and Biotech company said it was “VIAVI Solutions ability to roll-up performance metrics and metadata to a tool like Apex but still providing ability to get at the underlying packets.” He also stated that the value or “bang for the buck is outstanding.”

The bottom line

In today’s digital age, where connectivity is essential for business success, organisations need robust network performance management solutions like the VIAVI Observer Platform to ensure the reliability, security, and efficiency of their network infrastructure. Whether it’s optimising application performance, detecting security threats, or ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, Bloor believes that VIAVI equips organisations with the tools they need to succeed in today’s complex IT landscape.