Cisco ThousandEyes

Positive

We use ThousandEyes  for monitoring and troubleshooting, especially when end-users complain about latency or poor performance. We rely on ThousandEyes  to provide metrics to see if the problem is related to the local Wi-Fi or the Internet. The main goal for ThousandEyes at our company is monitoring. We also have some integration with our other monitoring systems, and we use ThousandEyes to dive deeper into specific problems when they occur.

From an engineering perspective, we achieve an excellent return on investment by fixing problems rapidly and avoiding business downtime. ThousandEyes helps reduce troubleshooting time by at least fifty percent, allowing our team to quickly support end-users and maintain business operations.

The most valuable features of ThousandEyes are the full monitoring capabilities and the ability to identify the exact location of problems in the path between the application and the end-user. For example, ThousandEyes can notify us about specific paths on the internet that are facing issues, providing detailed insights to our service providers and allowing us to raise tickets and resolve problems. The detailed information ThousandEyes provides about performance issues is crucial for us, enabling us to navigate through various network segments effectively.

When I first started using ThousandEyes, I found it challenging to extract useful information due to the numerous options available. I needed some training to effectively troubleshoot. More detailed documentation explaining the metrics and the testing mechanisms would be helpful. The information is there, but understanding exactly what ThousandEyes is testing to make its conclusions can be obscure.

We have been using ThousandEyes for about six months.

Not too much. Since we deployed ThousandEyes, it has been running pretty well.

ThousandEyes is highly scalable. The only potential issue with scaling up is related to licensing costs, as deploying more agents around the globe could become expensive. However, the product itself is good at scaling because adding more agents enhances our monitoring capabilities.

I have not interacted frequently with their support team, but based on limited experience, I would rate their customer service as very nice. I'd give it an eight out of ten.

Positive

Before using ThousandEyes, we used SolarWinds and also relied on Cisco DNA Center  for monitoring. SolarWinds did not help much with comprehensive troubleshooting, and it required ad hoc testing.

I was not part of the deployment team. From what I know, the initial setup wasn’t overly complex, and our engineers received help from Cisco to deploy the product.

Our deployment involved just one or two network engineers along with some help from Cisco, likely around one or two people on the Cisco side as well.

We achieve a very good return on investment by fixing problems quickly, thus preventing users and the business from losing time and money due to poor performance or downtime. For an engineer, the tool speeds up problem identification significantly and improves overall network performance.

The licensing cost could be a potential problem depending on the agreement, especially for smaller businesses. In our company, this was manageable due to existing agreements with Cisco. ThousandEyes licenses are based on the number of flows processed, not just the number of agents deployed.

We did not evaluate any other tools before choosing ThousandEyes.

I would highly recommend ThousandEyes because it can reduce the time spent identifying issues by at least half and provide extensive visibility into network quality.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our customers use ThousandEyes  to monitor their voice and video applications, especially those integrated with our Cisco systems.

The solution's most valuable feature is the path analyzer, which identifies the node causing the errors. The solution's alerting system is good and enhances the operational response.

ThousandEyes  should expand its application monitoring to monitor some communication applications.

I have been using ThousandEyes for three years.

ThousandEyes is a very stable solution.

I rate the solution’s stability ten out of ten.

Our customers for ThousandEyes are mostly medium-sized and enterprise businesses from the manufacturing and finance sectors.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

The solution provides good technical support.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is quite easy. The solution can be deployed in a few hours. It's easy to set up, and the integration is good as well.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution’s initial setup an eight out of ten.

It takes around two to three years to see a return on investment with ThousandEyes. The solution provides quite good value.

I rate its return on investment a seven or eight out of ten.

The solution costs several thousand dollars per year.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution’s pricing a seven out of ten.

The solution saves time and is proactive in handling situations. The solution is deployed on on-prem devices, but it monitors cloud services. Users should first consider what services should be monitored and which devices need to be included. Once that is decided, further planning will be easier.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

ThousandEyes is an AI-based element. 

I felt it is slightly more intuitive, providing more end-to-end service delivery because it’s integrated with AI.

The usage is okay. The tool is helpful. It shows the impact assessment and structures that impact.

For application and user monitoring, we have been using it for different healthcare users. We have different sales-based solutions for healthcare.

Their user monitoring is slightly more practical. We’re really using it in user monitoring and Internet insights, which include customer journeys and creating those elements. That is more practical, I felt.

A few teams are still not using it completely. A few teams are partially adopting it. Only in the US and a few parts of Europe are they use it. But in Japan and a few other Asian countries, they are not using it. Only a few units in the US and Europe are using it.

So, it might add more value as it go into network operations. In the context of healthcare organizations, it might need slight improvement. Otherwise, it is good.

I was in a pure consulting role. See, I work with McKinsey and a few other organizations. What I do is support in bridging. I’m supporting three or four healthcare institutions and also an automobile organization where I see immense potential. 

So, my role is more strategic: how the tool system would help, how it will contribute, and how it will help the product managers and product owners define the roadmap execution. Also, the service management team, how do you look into execution design? My role is more strategic. 

My role is more consulting, insight consulting, and customer data consulting.

In my case, I’m more focused on consulting on this tool system, how it will create interfaces and support other systems to work. For example, patient management systems and how the data would be visualized. I normally work on that element more strategically but not on the execution element. 

For example, Path Visualization is more of an execution responsibility. I normally support the strategic responsibility more from a core area to route mapping, route visualization, highlighting, and grouping.

From a network engineering context, it’s very helpful.

One feature I liked is end-user monitoring. I support a healthcare institution for user-specific VPN gateway and Wi-Fi monitoring. That is slightly more practical. 

Also, I felt the application because we work on hardware systems in hospitals. The network application is really supported. 

But I’ve not explored more because it’s just been two to three months. I still have to look into how AI will be able to support this. I still have to understand the integration challenges we have been facing. So, there are a few elements that need broader experimentation. But in my role, I think that is something I’m able to see in the dashboard system.

It’s evolving; I feel it needs more holistic integration. It needs more improvement. It’s very good, but the integration can be slightly complicated on different platforms.

I used it for a healthcare organization, and the integration was slightly challenging.

In future releases, I would like to explore AI capabilities. AI would be more valuable because it works across different cloud and server systems. It looks into issue detection and insight modeling, so that is something I feel will be very helpful in the near future.

More AI because of compliance and other challenges, not because of the product challenge. It’s about regulations, and we have HIPAA laws in the US and many different kinds of laws. Because of that, these specific elements and certain units don’t allow the tooling system to be fully utilized. We also support a certain segment of healthcare, which is the army healthcare segment, which is more government-controlled. There are certain restrictions in moving into the cloud. That’s where I thought those elements might need some more improvement.

Also, looking into how we’ll be able to use more data visualization. It has it, but it doesn’t give you everything. If you look into the elements of use and so many other elements are there, but the UI/UX also has to be improved a bit, I feel. From a developer’s standpoint, it’s very easy, but from a consultant’s standpoint, there can be more enhancement, like one-click view and one-click report generation. Those things should be more seamless.

I have been using it for three to four months; I’ve been using it for one of the clients.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

Its scalability is good. 

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Scalability is good.

I have three clients. Because I started this specific project with this client recently. In three to four months, I’ve seen around three organizations that have already started using it. 

I’ve not proposed it to other clients as of now because I have to know the product end to end. Right now, I’m also in more initial exploration from a strategic way. I’ve not seen broad results as of now because it will take some time, right, from the output context.

So maybe after that, I will be able to share it with a few of my other clients. I think it will be very helpful in healthcare if certain things are improved because so many data elements are used for IT security and cloud security. I think that is where the impact would be much higher. 

I also work with a few cloud security organizations. I normally support only enterprise organizations. A few medium-sized businesses, which are more than 10,000 people. Most of my customer base is 20,00 to 200,00 users. I also support organizations with more than 500,000 users. These are a few clients that I’ve been working with for the last 10 to 12 years as a consultant. So that is something I feel would be valuable.

Scalability can be improved because of the UI/UX. If it improves, then it would be much easier from a user context. That is something I felt. Apart from that, I think it’s okay.

Technical teams are good, as far as I know. There are a few bits and pieces, integration challenges happen, initiative, but if the clients have not come up with big conflicts for me at this level, then it’s good news. As the external consultant, if they don’t come back and say, this is burning, then it’s good news. No news is good news sometimes.

They are able to sort it out. They are able to define it, and your customer service team and everyone are collaborating right. So that is okay. I think I’ll rate it high, very high.

Things are not coming to me, and that's a good indicator. So if any conflicts happen, they are not coming. We are able to resolve it either through documentation and ThousandEyes has developer resources and integration documentation. So they’re able to solve it. Also, customer teams might already be supporting them. So that is okay.

Positive

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. Based on different region specifics. 

This platform has a very big value in the future, but different organizations have different contexts of economic value. And then there are a few challenges. 

From a product context, I don’t know competitive products. Personally, I have not gone into that. So, the pricing can be reasonable based on the PPFC, potential pricing.  

So the price is more suitable for large businesses.  So if I look into 1000 to 1500people organizations, even if they are into NextOps security, of course, there is a huge cost-benefit analysis and so many things I have to validate before I promote or even suggest this tool because it will change the whole infrastructure, execution, and other elements. So I felt that. 

But I felt that this was slightly over there. If you look into the really big value that it pays, it can create. 

Overall, I would rate it around eight out of ten, considering all these elements, because there is scope for improvement. It’s a very good product, but it has more potential for improvement as I go through it.