In modern IT and Software Operations, network observability is critical for troubleshooting and improving the customer experience. Having the right platform is essential for maintaining your network infrastructure's performance, security, and efficiency.

Here are the top 5 solutions on the market in 2023:

No 1. Kentik

Overview

Kentik is a transformative force in network management, revolutionizing how businesses handle their digital infrastructure. In an era defined by the internet's pervasive influence, the company recognizes the critical importance of real-time visibility into network traffic. Traditional network appliances and tools have struggled to keep up. Still, Kentik offers an internet-native SaaS solution that grants immediate insight into traffic flows, even across networks not owned by the user.

Its unwavering commitment to actual traffic data sets it apart as the ultimate source of truth for network-related inquiries. This empowers network operators with the tools to optimize traffic delivery, ensuring the seamless movement of data packets. 

However, Kentik doesn't just stop at visibility; it recognizes the need for business context in infrastructure management. In a digital landscape where efficient network management is synonymous with business success, they provide the tools for thriving in the modern age, offering a path to network excellence and operational efficiency.

Key Product Features

Kentik offers a range of key product features crucial for effective network management and observability in the digital age. Let's elaborate on these features and explain why they are essential:

Complete Multi and Hybrid Cloud Network Visibility

In today's landscape, networks often span on-premises data centers, public and private clouds, and containerized environments. Kentik's ability to provide complete visibility across these diverse network environments, including networks hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and IBM Cloud,  is essential. 

It ensures that infrastructure operators can monitor and manage traffic, connectivity, and performance seamlessly, regardless of where their resources are located. Without this visibility, businesses risk blind spots that can lead to inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and degraded user experiences.

Network Performance Monitoring

Network performance is critical for delivering a seamless user experience and ensuring that applications and services operate optimally. Kentik's modern, scalable Network Performance Monitoring (NPM) capabilities enable organizations to track the health and performance of their network infrastructure. 

The ability to ingest infrastructure metrics and synthesize them with context-enriched traffic flow data is crucial for rapidly identifying and resolving performance issues. Without this feature, network problems could go undetected or take longer to resolve, potentially impacting business operations and user satisfaction.

Synthetic Monitoring

Proactive monitoring is critical in preventing issues before they affect users. Kentik's synthetic monitoring feature allows organizations to simulate user interactions and test their network's performance under controlled conditions.

Correlating these synthetic tests with accurate traffic data across various infrastructure environments and applications helps ensure a reliable digital experience. It allows businesses to proactively address performance bottlenecks, potential outages, or slowdowns, reducing the impact on end-users and customer satisfaction.

Network Edge and Connectivity Cost Optimization

Managing the cost and performance of network connectivity is essential, especially for large-scale networks. Kentik's peering and interconnection intelligence is vital in optimizing these aspects. It helps organizations make informed decisions about traffic routing and manage their network edge effectively. 

This optimization can result in significant cost savings while maintaining or improving the quality of network connections. Without these insights, businesses may overspend on connectivity or compromise performance.

Benefits of Using Kentik

Cost Optimization:

• Reducing Cloud and Connectivity Spend: Kentik's features help control cloud and connectivity costs by providing insights into network optimization, traffic routing, and resource utilization. This enables informed decision-making and minimizes wasteful spending.

• Capturing ROI from Cloud Migrations, Cloud Backups, and Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Strategies: Kentik assists businesses in optimizing and assessing the ROI of cloud-related strategies, ensuring that cloud investments are efficient and cost-effective.

Performance Enhancement:

• Improving Application Performance and Reliability for End-Users: Kentik's network performance monitoring and synthetic monitoring features ensure consistent application performance, enhancing user satisfaction and competitiveness.

• Optimizing Performance of Large, Complex Networks: Kentik enables organizations to maximize the performance of intricate networks by analyzing traffic patterns, identifying issues, and implementing corrective measures.

Security and Incident Management:

• Detecting Security Risks, Anomalies, and DDoS Attacks Automatically: Kentik's real-time security threat detection helps safeguard network infrastructure and data by quickly identifying and mitigating threats.

• Reducing incident MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution): Kentik's features enable faster detection and resolution of network and cloud incidents, reducing downtime and associated costs.

Efficiency and Productivity:

• Eliminating Engineering Time Waste with Network-Level Insight: Kentik's network-level insights prevent engineers from getting lost in application-specific details, enabling them to focus on network optimization and higher-level issues.

• Improving team efficiency - empower engineers to do more without growing the team: Kentik's platform empowers engineering teams to accomplish more with existing resources, enhancing overall team efficiency.

Visibility and Analytics:

• Total Vendor-Agnostic Visibility into Complex Hybrid, Multi-Cloud, and Kubernetes Networks: Kentik provides comprehensive visibility into diverse network environments, ensuring control, security, and performance in hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios.

• Making smarter decisions faster with AI insights and business-context-enriched traffic data: Kentik's AI-driven insights and enriched traffic data enable organizations to make informed decisions quickly, improving operational efficiency and strategic choices.

• De-risk complex networks and ensure critical infrastructure reliability: Kentik's comprehensive network insights help organizations identify and mitigate risks in complex networks, securing essential infrastructure reliability and security.

No. 2 Datadog

Overview

Datadog is the leading infrastructure monitoring platform that has recently built solutions to address network observability. With Datadog, organizations can monitor their networks, applications, and services in real-time, quickly identifying and troubleshooting issues before they impact end-users. 

Datadog offers a unified platform that combines infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, and more, making it a powerful tool for DevOps teams and IT professionals. Its user-friendly interface, customizable dashboards, and robust alerting capabilities make it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes looking to ensure the reliability and availability of their digital services.

Key Product Features

Network Monitoring

Datadog provides real-time visibility into network traffic, helping organizations identify performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot connectivity issues.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

Datadog's APM capabilities enable tracking of application performance and user experiences, allowing for faster issue resolution.

Log Management

It offers log aggregation and analysis, helping users correlate logs with performance data to troubleshoot problems efficiently.

Alerting and Notification

Datadog allows users to set up customizable alerts and notifications to address issues proactively.

Seamless Integration

It supports various integrations with third-party tools and services, making it adaptable to multiple tech stacks.

No. 3 LogicMonitor

Overview

LogicMonitor is a cloud-based network observability platform designed to help businesses gain deep insights into their networks, applications, and cloud infrastructure performance. It offers automatic discovery and monitoring of devices and services across on-premises and multi-cloud environments, making it a valuable solution for modern IT operations. 

LogicMonitor provides real-time visibility through customizable dashboards, advanced alerting, and machine learning-based analytics, allowing organizations to address issues and optimize their resources proactively. With its scalable and intuitive platform, LogicMonitor empowers IT teams to ensure the availability and performance of critical systems.

Key Product Features

Auto-Discovery

LogicMonitor can automatically discover and monitor devices and services in your network, reducing setup time.

Performance Monitoring

It offers real-time monitoring of network performance metrics, helping identify anomalies and trends.

Custom Dashboards

Users can create customized dashboards with widgets to visualize data and monitor specific aspects of their network.

Alerting and Escalation

LogicMonitor allows for creating alerts based on predefined thresholds and escalations, ensuring prompt incident response.

AI-Powered Anomaly Detection

The platform leverages AI and machine learning to identify abnormal behavior in your infrastructure and provide early warnings.

No. 4 Groundcover

Overview

Groundcover is an emerging network observability platform that focuses on cutting-edge eBPF technology and provides end-to-end visibility and automation for network operations. It offers advanced monitoring and tracing capabilities, allowing organizations to understand how data flows through complex application stacks. 

Groundcover's unique focus on security and compliance makes it a valuable tool for organizations prioritizing performance and protection. With features like distributed tracing, anomaly detection, and compliance reporting, Groundcover helps IT and security teams ensure the integrity and security of their networked systems.

Key Product Features

Real-Time Topology Maps

Groundcover creates dynamic network topology maps to visualize network components and connections.

Automated Network Discovery

It automatically discovers devices and services on the network, reducing manual configuration efforts.

Performance Analytics 

Groundcover offers detailed performance analytics to track bandwidth utilization, latency, and packet loss.

Change Management

The platform helps manage change by tracking and alerting network configuration changes.

Collaboration Tools

Groundcover includes collaboration features to facilitate communication among network teams during troubleshooting.

No 5. Netscout

Overview

Netscout is a well-established network observability platform known for its packet and traffic analysis expertise. It gives organizations deep insights into their network traffic, allowing them to detect and resolve performance issues, security threats, and network anomalies. 

Netscout's solutions include packet capture, analysis, and visualization tools that help IT professionals comprehensively understand their network's behavior. It's precious for large enterprises and service providers where in-depth network visibility is critical for maintaining service quality and security. 

Netscout's long-standing reputation in the industry reflects its commitment to helping organizations ensure the reliability and performance of their networks.

Key Product Features

Packet Analysis

 Netscout's packet analysis capabilities allow for deep inspection of network traffic to identify and troubleshoot issues.

Application Performance Monitoring

It provides insights into how applications perform over the network, helping optimize performance.

DDoS Detection and Mitigation

Netscout offers tools for detecting and mitigating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Service Assurance

The platform ensures the availability and performance of critical services through proactive monitoring and alerting.

Packet-Based Reporting

Netscout provides detailed packet-based reports for in-depth analysis of network traffic.

Conclusion

Network observability platforms have become indispensable in modern IT operations. These platforms offer real-time visibility, proactive issue detection, and robust security features, making them essential for organizations aiming to maintain their network infrastructure's performance, security, and efficiency.

Each platform has unique strengths and features, catering to network observability needs. Depending on an organization's specific requirements, one of these solutions can help ensure the efficient and secure operation of its network infrastructure in 2023's dynamic landscape.