Cisco integrates ThousandEyes with AppDynamics, Catalyst

Cisco has integrated its ThousandEyes internet intelligence technology with the Catalyst 9300 and 9400 campus switches and the AppDynamics application performance monitor.

The Cisco product integrations, announced this week at Cisco Live, provide network and application visibility stretching from the campus or branch to SaaS applications and software running on public or private clouds.

Starting Monday, Cisco will pre-install the ThousandEyes agent in the Catalyst IOS XE operating system. Cisco has added ThousandEyes to a DNA Advantage or Premier license at no charge for up to 5,000 switches. Existing Catalyst customers will have to update their hardware to the latest OS to access ThousandEyes. Cisco requires the same licensing.

The Catalyst-ThousandEyes combo lets companies monitor software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) overlays, hop-by-hop underlays, ISP performance and internet routing.

The AppDynamics integration adds ThousandEyes intelligence to the former's dashboard, called Dash Studio. The combination will provide AppDynamics users with information on the networks carrying data to and from SaaS applications and software running on public and private clouds.

The AppDynamics dashboard provides data on the performance of application infrastructure, service tiers and business transactions. Having that information with ThousandEyes intelligence should promote better communication between AppOps and NetOps teams, Cisco executives said.

Cisco acquired ThousandEyes last May with the intent to integrate it with multiple products. The technology monitors the performance of traffic paths over the public internet via software agents running on private and colocation data centers, and AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Within the public clouds, customers can deploy agents on their private networks, adding them to ThousandEyes' monitoring capabilities.

The public internet is often the underlay of the virtual networks that companies create to carry traffic across the enterprise WAN. Many companies use SD-WANs to build and manage the virtual overlay.

Antone Gonsalves is the news director for the Networking Media Group. He has deep and wide experience in tech journalism. Since the mid-1990s, he has worked for UBM's InformationWeek, TechWeb and Computer Reseller News. He has also written for Ziff Davis' PC Week, IDG's CSOonline and IBTMedia's CruxialCIO, and rounded all that out by covering startups for Bloomberg News. He started his journalism career at United Press International, working as a reporter and editor in California, Texas, Kansas and Florida. He can be found on Twitter at @AntoneG.