Spyke – Positioning for Success
Dave Britt – Director APM Technologies
Confidential - NDA Required
Introducing Spyke Sales Battlecard
Value Proposition
Features/benefits
Customer Pain Points
Addressing Objections
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Flows, Sessions and DPI
• Much confusion around the definitions of
APM and NPM
• Terms such flows, sessions and DPI used
interchangeably
• Same terms mean different things to
different vendors
• Over 100 vendors in this space offering
polling, flow monitoring, packet capture,
agent based and DPI solutions.
• Hard to compare “apples to apples”.
• At the end of the day, what do customers
want?
How well are the applications being
delivered to the end users?
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Introducing ……
Application Aware Network Performance Management
• Meet the needs of network engineers as well providing business relevant
application views
• Provide application level performance information from a network perspective
• Agentless, appliance based solutions
• Complementary to network packet broking (NPB) tools
• Net Optics market leaders in provision of complementary AANPM and NPB
solutions
• Other AANPM criteria (ref Gartner) include Flow Based (NetFlow, IPFIX)
capability, dashboards, threshold alarming, VoIP and application awareness
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Drilling down, NPM
Layer 4 (TCP/UDP Information)
Layer 3 (IP Information)
Traditional NPM tools. NetFlow
based products, freeware tools such
as nTop.
Common attributes across all flows
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Drilling down, Beyond NPM, toward AANPM
Client Browser Type
Download Time
HTTP
URL
Basic AANPM. Analysis of a single
application (HTTP).
Dependent on DPI (Payload inspection)
Application specific metrics
Port 80
Layer 4 (TCP/UDP Information)
Layer 3 (IP Information)
Traditional NPM tools. NetFlow
based products, freeware tools such
as nTop.
Common attributes across all flows
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Drilling down, Full AANPM, Spyke
Caller ID
Jitter
MOS
Query
Yahoo
Response Code
Hotmail
POP3
RTT
VoIP
DNS
Client Browser Type
Attachment
Name
To Address
Download Time
SMTP
From Address
Application aware metrics.
Business relevant information
Coverage across many applications
Reliant on complex DPI techniques
Major differentiator for Spyke.
Email
HTTP
URL
Layer 4 (TCP/UDP Information)
Layer 3 (IP Information)
Basic AANPM. Analysis of a single
application (HTTP).
Dependent on DPI (Payload inspection)
Application specific metrics
Traditional NPM tools. NetFlow
based products, freeware tools such
as nTop.
Common attributes across all flows
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Customer Pain Points
I need to monitor the
availability and
performance of the network
and applications using it
Real time views (5 second updates)
Historical views
Key performance indicators (top
talkers, latency, conversations)
Application drill downs
Technical and business level reports
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Customer Pain Points
I need to understand how
clients and applications are
using the network
View network usage by application
Session reports showing application
detail
Geographic representation of traffic
and application flows
Long term capacity planning and
trending reports
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Customer Pain Points
I need to monitor the
quality of my organisations
VoIP calls.
View all VoIP calls across network
Summary tables showing call details
Drill down to specific call metrics
• Caller/callee ID
•Originating subnet
•Start time and duration
•MOS and Jitter (RTP dependent)
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Common objections: Spyke v Open Source
+
Wireshark
Paessler PRTG
• Excellent packet analyser
• Flow based analysis (NPM)
• Highly technical point solution
• Very nice user interface
• Can be used in conjunction with
Spyke
• Good point solution
• No continuous capture option
• No business layer reporting
+
+
• Not strictly speaking Open Source
• Limited scalability
• No historical data
Nagios
nTop
• SNMP management platform
• Flow based analysis (NPM)
• No direct competition to Spyke
• Some extensions (e.g. latency
and voice)
• Limited historical reporting
• Limited scalability
• Rudimentary reporting capability
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Common Objections: Danaher/Fluke
OptiView
NetFlow Tracker
ClearSight Analyzer
Visual Performance
Manager
Simple flow based NPM solution
NetFlow/sFlow/IPFIX only
No deep packet inspection
Ex Crannog product
Powerful packet capture and analysis
Technical troubleshooting tool
Can be complementary to Spyke and appTap
Multi tiered approach using passive appliances
Network performance Appliance (NPM)
Application performance Appliance (DPI)
Good VoIP monitoring, limited support for other
applications
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Common Objections: Solarwinds
Network Performance Monitor
-Simple SNMP polling engine
- No flow based capability
- No DPI capability
Orion Network Traffic Analyser
-Simple flow based NPM solution
- NetFlow, sFlow, IPFI
- No DPI capability
VoIP & Network Quality Manager
- Utilises Cisco SLA for synthetic transactions
- Leverages call data records from Cisco CallManager
- Limited multi vendor support
-No DPI capability
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Common Objections: NetScout
nGenius Performance Manager
nGenius Voice/Video Manager
Very comprehensive coverage across
packet analysis, NPM and AANPM
nGenius Enterprise Intelligence
Very complex product set
nGenius Trading Intelligence
Could be considered the ‘Rolls
Royce” of monitoring
InfiniStream Packet Analysis
nGenius Performance Manager
for Flows
nGenius Packet Flow Switch
Level of integration between acquired
products still needs work
Possibility to use Spyke/appTap to
feed flow data to existing NetScout
installations
Competitive advantage … price.
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When to hold and when to fold ….
The customer already has WAN optimization deployed.
• E.g. Riverbed, Juniper, Blue Coat, Expand
• WAN Optimization products produce similar statistical data
• Normally limited with respect to historical reporting
• Normally limited with respect to reporting functionality
• WAN optimization vendors aggressively moving into NPM market
Spyke win not impossible, but the level of overlap is high which makes
for a tough sale.
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When to hold and when to fold ….
The customer already has enterprise wide performance management
deployed.
• E.g. NetScout, Compuware, Fluke, HP
• Determine the level of statistical information, often it is only SNMP based.
• Are all the remote sites completely covered? Can we deploy appTap for full remote site
coverage?
• Option to work with the existing tools – Trojan Horse approach.
Spyke win not impossible, focus on complementary features rather than
trying to unseat incumbent vendor.
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Value Proposition at a Glance
Others
Spyke
• High cost
• Low cost
• Complex (steep learning curve)
• Easy to use
• Point solutions
• Limited DPI
• Comprehensive analysis across
voice and data
• NetFlow only
•True DPI
• Typically NPM based
• NetFlow compatible
• True AANPM
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A small glimpse into the future ….
Continued consolidation of NPB and NPM markets
• NetScout acquiring Simena
• Danaher with VSS and Fluke
• Prediction : Continued acquisition of NPM vendors by NPB vendors
Existing customers already inquiring about NPM features on existing Net Optics
switching platforms
Future bandwidth requirements will mandate that NPM will need to be done in
silicon not software
Net Optics is the most advanced vendor in this space and
is well placed to continue to be the market leader
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Thank You