What is Thousand Eyes?

Overview

ThousandEyes is a SaaS Cisco-acquired, which allows for comprehensive performance monitoring for networks and applications. This platform provides end-to-end visibility into digital infrastructures such as tracking internet health and network paths over internal as well as external environments. It uses synthetic and real-user monitoring techniques to make sure an organization can predict and proactively resolve all performance problems, ensuring perfect digital experience for businesses as well as end-users. Explore ThousandEyes, its key features, pricing, use cases, and career opportunities in this comprehensive guide designed for professionals and tech enthusiasts. 

What is ThousandEyes?

ThousandEyes is a Software-as-a-Sservice (SaaS) acquired by Cisco in 2020. It is a cutting-edge solution for comprehensive network and application performance monitoring. It is designed primarily to address the complexities of modern IT environments with the power to deliver businesses the best digital experiences by providing complete visibility into intricate network paths, application delivery, and internet health. 

A uniqueness of this platform is the ability to view the internal infrastructure and the external networks and services on which they rely, such as internet service providers, cloud providers, and SaaS applications. It helps businesses find performance bottlenecks instantly, connectivity problems, or outages and resolve them easily, thereby allowing smooth-running operations and sublime customer experiences. 

ThousandEyes uses synthetic and real-user monitoring together for actionable insights so that any potential issues can be proactively addressed before they hit the operations. Its advanced capabilities are trusted by industry leaders, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and IBM, emphasizing its value to critical systems' performance and reliability. 

Delivering end-to-end visibility of digital service delivery, ThousandEyes makes organizations enable optimum network performance and operation efficiency with superior responsiveness to customer and end-user expectations.

What Does ThousandEyes Do?

ThousandEyes is a very powerful visibility platform intended to give deep insights into how your network and its applications are performing. This tool differs from most traditional monitoring tools that focus mainly on the infrastructure owned and controlled by the organizations. Instead, ThousandEyes expands its visibility into third-party service providers, ISPs, and cloud vendors that manage external networks. 

It combines active and passive monitoring techniques to give businesses insights in real-time and over history regarding the entire path their data travels. It also shows insight into how well the performance of cloud-based services is being carried out along with that of on-premise infrastructure and SaaS applications. If issues arise anywhere on this, whether on your network or an external service, ThousandEyes identifies the root cause of this problem and helps businesses swiftly resolve it. 

ThousandEyes is extremely valuable, where businesses rely on many services and networks beyond their direct control. It allows organizations to troubleshoot complex issues such as slow application performance, ingested networks, or blackouts by enabling complete visibility into the entire ecosystem in which their digital services operate. This makes their operations more efficient and enhances end-users' experience through smooth interactions with digital services. 

How ThousandEyes Improves Network Visibility and Application Performance?

ThousandEyes impacts how organizations monitor and optimize their networks and applications by integrating active and passive monitoring techniques. Its globally distributed sensors provide a complete view of network paths, enabling real-time and historical insights into detecting and addressing performance issues. It helps businesses to act in case of disruptions or bottlenecks, thereby reducing downtime and enhancing user experiences. 

Network path visualization and detailed performance metrics, among other things, help ThousandEyes make accurate troubleshooting and optimization of the infrastructure possible. Such tools help reduce MTTI and MTTR while enabling organizations to run operations seamlessly toward maximum efficiency. Such visibility plays a key role in maintaining a high and reliable performance of digital services in an interconnected environment. 

How ThousandEyes Helps You Stay Ahead of Internet Outages and Performance Issues?

ThousandEyes helps detect internet outages and degraded performance before they impact digital operations. It monitors the health and performance of critical services using cloud agents across hundreds of ISPs, cloud providers, and SaaS platforms globally. These agents create synthetic traffic that simulates user interaction, which enables the platform to identify potential bottlenecks or failures before they escalate. 

Real-time monitoring and prompt alerts help businesses react to problems immediately, reducing downtime and protecting user experiences. By pinpointing disruptions at all network layers, ThousandEyes gives organizations actionable insights to maintain high levels of reliability and performance. 

10 Key Features You Need to Know about ThousandEyes

Maintaining seamless network performance is critical for businesses to thrive. ThousandEyes offers unparalleled visibility and insights into ensuring operational excellence. Here are ten key features you need to know: 

1. ThousandEyes tracks all the paths in the network from source to destination. Every hop in the path it traverses gives a much better view, which can point out the problems anywhere in the network with higher precision. 
2. Synthetic testing with real-time data gives ThousandEyes a complete understanding of network and application performance, allowing organizations to stay at peak operations and achieve user satisfaction. 
3. The platform monitors internet services, cloud providers, and SaaS applications and helps businesses ensure that critical services are reliable and available, which is necessary for their business operations. 
4. ThousandEyes delivers current performance metrics and historical trends so that teams can make data-driven decisions, predict future problems, and improve long-term network performance. 
5. The platform highlights network bottlenecks and disruptions using clear and actionable visualizations, helping troubleshoot intuitively and efficiently. 
6. ThousandEyes measures actual user experiences by capturing metrics directly from end-user devices, thus ensuring that the organizations can tackle issues impacting their customers or employees. 
7. ThousandEyes offers fine-grained performance data by ISPs and cloud providers; hence, businesses can easily understand the quality of the services provided by third parties. 

Predictive alerts and detailed diagnostics enable teams to proactively address emerging problems before they result in downtime or disruption. 

1. The platform integrates seamlessly to the available IT tools to make their workflows even more efficient to operate on diverse environments. 
2. Thousand Eyes is deployable on premises, on cloud infrastructures, or in a hybrid model to support various sizes and complexity of organizations. 

ThousandEyes Pricing Guide

ThousandEyes licenses are included with Cisco's DNA Advantage subscriptions, offering added value to enterprise customers. Licenses can also be purchased separately, providing flexible options for varying business needs. 

What are ThousandEyes Alternatives? 

Several alternatives to ThousandEyes offer network and application monitoring with unique features tailored to different needs: 

1. Kentik: Famous for traffic analysis and packet-based monitoring, Kentik is said to offer real-time insight into network performance so organizations can optimize large and dynamic environments. 
2. Netscout nPulse & Keysight Hawkeye: These tools are great for synthetic testing and proactive performance monitoring, so they are good for catching potential problems before they become real ones. However, their complexity and higher costs may make them more suitable for larger enterprises with advanced needs. 
3. Kadiska: It focuses on network performance and digital experience management, differentiating it with its SaaS and cloud applications approach, offering a user-friendly way of optimizing cloud-based operations. 

ThousandEyes Agents

ThousandEyes provides three types of agents, each designed for specific monitoring needs: 

Cloud Agents 

• These are strategically distributed around global ISPs and platforms, which enable monitoring internet outages, connectivity, and performance. 

• They provide a holistic perspective on the behavior of external networks and indicate problems outside the organization's control. 

Enterprise Agents 

• These agents installed in private networks are meant to oversee their internal infrastructures, from data centers to private clouds. 

• They provide insights into on-premise network performance and will help troubleshoot internal connectivity issues. 

Endpoint Agents 

• Installed on end-user devices, these agents provide real-time metrics on user experience. 

• The best use of endpoint agents is to monitor application performance and network health from the end-user's perspective so that digital interactions are seamless. 

What are the Benefits of Cisco ThousandEyes?

• Cisco ThousandEyes reduces the complexity of monitoring your network by providing actionable insight into infrastructure performance, making downtime as short as possible for organizations, and optimizing user experience. 

• Its real-time visibility through paths and application behavior can quickly identify and eliminate problem sources, ensuring operations become seamless. 

• By enabling comprehensive monitoring of on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments, ThousandEyes promotes a resilient digital ecosystem. 

• Predictive alerts and detailed performance insights enhance business continuity and strengthen reliability, enabling organizations to provide exceptional customer value. 

ThousandEyes Use Cases and Benefits

ThousandEyes addresses critical performance issues such as: 

• Video Conferencing Problem Issues: Resolves Slow Disrupted Video communications ensure Translucent Un-interrupt-ed meetings. 

• Website Performance Issues: Diagnoses and resolves degraded website speeds and reliability, enabling businesses to maintain fast-loading, responsive sites. 

• Cloud Service Disruptions: ThousandEyes helps businesses deliver seamless digital experiences across all touchpoints through real-time diagnostics and proactive solutions. 

ThousandEyes Career Options

ThousandEyes offers roles in network engineering, software development, product management, and customer success, with strong growth potential in the expanding network monitoring industry. 

Professionals may build specialized knowledge in innovative technologies, such as synthetic monitoring and AI diagnostics, creating a way to manage. 

In the U.S., salaries at ThousandEyes range from approximately $52,223 per year for entry-level roles like Order Operations Specialist to upwards of $370,764 per year for senior roles such as Vice President of Sales. 

In India, entry-level roles start at ₹6–12 LPA, and senior positions exceed ₹30 LPA. ThousandEyes offers competitive pay and opportunities to work on industry-leading innovations, making it a number one choice for career growth. 

Conclusion

Thousandeyes leads in the industry concerning the visibility of the network as well as the performance monitoring of applications. Such is a must-have for organizations optimizing their digital operations since its advanced features, range, and smooth integration in the Cisco ecosystem stand unparalleled. With ThousandEyes, businesses can make easy navigating of complexities in modern IT ensure exceptional user experiences. NetCom Learning specializes Cisco training focusing on the monitorization of network and application performance, using ThousandEyes. Hands-on experience in the course is provided with ThousandEyes' advanced features, equipping participants with the right skills to monitor and optimize their digital operations. It combines real-world scenarios with expert instruction in the course to equip professionals with skills that will enable them to enhance network visibility and ensure exceptional user experiences within complex IT environments.