Fluke Networks Launches New Network

and Application Performance Business:

Visual Network Systems

Event

On June 28, 2010, Fluke Networks announced the creation and launch of a new operating entity within

the Danaher family – Visual Network Systems. The new group will take enterprise-class performance

monitoring technologies for networks and applications from the Fluke Networks product portfolio

and use them to address the growing needs for such solutions within large enterprise and managed

services settings. Visual Network Systems will operate as an independent entity, with its own devel-

opment resources and sales and marketing teams, but will remain in position to access and leverage

technologies present within other Danaher business units, including Fluke Networks and Tektronix.

In parallel, Visual Network Systems also made their first two product announcements – an open Web

services API called VPM Connex™ and a major refresh and upgrade within their network-attached

Analysis Service Element (ASE) probe product line.

Market Context

As IT infrastructures, and in particular IP networks, continue to mature and become increasingly

reliable from an uptime perspective, focus can and should be turned towards tuning and optimiza-

tion – the realm of performance monitoring and management. And while network performance is a

valuable incremental step for evolving operational practices, a longer-term and higher-value objective

is to establish direct visibility into and awareness of how the applications and services traversing the

network are behaving and performing. Such visibility can be established

drawn from network-based monitoring sources.

While this move towards visibility has been a natural evolutionary progression for the tools, tech-

nologies, and practices within the network engineering and operations team, similar approaches are

being taken in other IT groups. In particular, application development and support groups have been

deploying application performance management (APM) products, many of which use similar or even

identical sources of measurement (packet analysis and agents are most common) to provide a deeper

understanding of how complex, multi-component, distributed applications are performing as well as

the experiences of end users.

Both the network and applications teams have a similar set of objectives in establishing these types of

visibility. First, they strive to better understand how the served community is experiencing IT services,

and thus whether or not IT is meeting expectations and adequately supporting IT-dependent business

processes. Second, they are looking for technologies to help them more efficiently and effectively

respond to failures or degradations. And thirdly, they seek clear understanding of current operating

conditions, growth and usage trends, and early indicators of potential problems so that well-informed,

IMPACT BRIEF | 1

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in a number of ways, including packet inspection, flow records, and pas-

sive or synthetic test agents. If successful, the result is an understanding

of who is using the network infrastructure, which applications/services

are active, and the quality of end-user experiences. As evidence of

the wealth of activity in this area, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT

ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) analysts are tracking more than 50 individual

management tools companies who currently offer application awareness

Establishing visibility into

applications and services

traversing the network is

a high value objective for

evolving operations.