Network Application Governance

 

Network Application Governance functions are unique to Ipanema. Because of its system design, the Ipanema Solution allows network managers to concentrate for the first time on high-level activities that make it easy to deliver on the network's perennial promise to be a strategic business asset.

 

Network Application Governance features allow to:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enable the shift to Application Service Level Agreements

 

Enterprises are looking today at consistent end-to-end application performance guarantees. Central to many business applications, the WAN is a crucial component to achieve that goal. Service providers must therefore offer some guarantees in terms of the performance of applications running over the WAN.

 

Offering such guarantees is the role of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are defined between the service providers and the enterprises. But typical network services SLAs are not directly linked to the performance of business-critical applications. They typically use low-level indicators such as link delay or packet loss that are generally only measured from router to router using “pings” or performance-sapping router probing.

 

The problem with such an approach to SLAs is threefold:

 

  • The resulting SLAs are by design not representative of the application performance, but of the link itself.

 

  • The SLAs are not representative of the performance from LAN to LAN. The ping or router SAA measurements that, in most implementations take place between PE routers or shadow routers do not fully take into account congestion issues at the CPE side.

 

  • Finally, the SLAs are only an estimate of the performance because ping and SAA results are based on extra, simulated traffic that only takes place intermittently.

 

Ipanema provides a turnkey Application SLA definition, measurement and enforcement framework.  It includes a range of high-level application quality indicators suitable for Application SLAs (e.g. AQS and MOS), the ability to automatically check for Application SLA validity (through the concept of “overactivity”), a set of dedicated SLA tools and reports and the ability to actively enforce the Application SLAs over the network thanks to the System's global and dynamic approach to traffic management based on application performance objectives.

 

Ipanema empowers Application-centric SLAs that:

 

  • Connect to the business of the enterprise through its applications.

 

  • Clearly and precisely cover the different segments of the application delivery chain.

 

  • Are representative of the actual quality levels delivered to end-users.

 

 

 


Rightsize the bandwidth according to the desired service levels


In order to deliver the appropriate service levels to end-users, the appropriate bandwidth must be deployed at the different sites.

 

The Rightsizing feature of the Ipanema System leverages Optimization and Visibility features to analyze network capacity and user demand compared to performance objectives. From this analysis, it computes the exact relationship between bandwidth and service levels.


In this example, the Rightsizing report shows that, on the considered site and chosen time period (which can extend into the future thanks to our extrapolation algorithms), with 512Kbit/s of access link capacity, end-users of critical applications would have been served with the appropriate amount of network resources 100% of the time, while end-users of non-critical applications would have their quality targets met only between 80% and 90% of the time. For all users of all applications to receive good quality levels 100% of the time, about 1.7 Mbit/s would have been required. That is more than a 3 times the difference in link size whereby non-critical applications will miss some of their performance targets 10%-15% of the time with less capacity available.

 

Which is the best point on the application performance/link cost curve?  This is a question that for the first time can be asked and answered with our Rightsizing report.

 

It is a completely new way of sizing network links. It is much more aligned with the needs of the business than any other capacity planning solution.

 
Simplify change management, accelerate operations and minimize TCO


Traditional traffic control solutions are based on policies that need to be set locally on each device, whether by a router or a shaper. A network with a solution based on this approach becomes difficult to manage when the number of changes and sites increase, even modestly. Policies are static by nature, they rely on a assessment of what the traffic should be on each site (such as the mix of applications, number of end-users, etc.). Policies can be correct when the traffic situation is very similar to what has been forecasted.

 

But a network is a living creature, in which many changes occur, driven by both the IT organization and the network itself. Since they require site by site configuration and since they need to be adapted to each change manually, policy based solutions can rapidly become a nightmare to manage.

 

The objective-based model of the Ipanema System dramatically simplifies change management. It does not require setting traffic management parameters on each device. The parameters are computed automatically based on what the end-users expect from the network (the application performance objectives) and what the situation is with the network at any given time (number of end-users, application mix, congestion levels). Many changes that would require extensive manual labor with traditional solutions are handled completely automatically by the Ipanema System. Only changes such as adding a site or application still require some user effort, but it is measured in minutes versus tens of hours.

 

With our approach, change management is greatly simplified, global operations can be achieved immediately, and the overall traffic management total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced to a minimum.

 

 

 

 

 


Allocate responsibilities between the WAN and IT domains


When troubleshooting application performance, it is important to be able to identify the individual impact of each segment of the application delivery chain.

 

Thanks to a comprehensive set of metrics, Ipanema is able to isolate the contribution to the performance of applications of: 

 

  • The WAN cloud as delivered by the service provider – those indications can be used for example to check the WAN readiness for demanding applications such as VoIP

 

  •  The WAN including the impact of WAN Optimization measured from LAN to LAN

 

  •  The server/client for TCP flows

 

 

 

 

 

 

Encourage good practices through cost allocation based on usage and delivered performance

 

The Ipanema System collects information about what volume and quality for each application is really delivered to their end-users.

 

A dedicated set of tools enables flexibly collating this information to precisely allocate costs to the different business units, thus encouraging good business practices and meeting a critical need for those organizations where IT chargeback is a perennial problem.

 

 

 

 

 

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