Top 10 Network Monitoring Software and Visibility Tools

If you need to understand what's happening on your network, these tools can help you.

Network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) software, whether running as a stand-alone appliance or embedded in network equipment, can help reduce productivity issues for users within an enterprise and when interacting with external networks.

However, as corporate network traffic continues to increase, as users connecting to the cloud and new IoT devices grow dramatically, enterprises and network performance monitoring vendors face increasing challenges.

Gartner analysts Sanjit Ganguli and Vivek Bhalla wrote in a recent Magic Quadrant report that NPMD products aim to not only monitor network traffic and infrastructure, but also identify performance optimization opportunities. Gartner estimates that NPMD will reach a $1.6 billion market and grow at a rate of 20% per year.

Gartner evaluated 17 vendors based on the quality of their NPMD offerings, marketing, sales and product strategy, as well as overall size, market viability and financial performance. NetScout, Viavi and Riverbed were ranked as leaders in the MQ.

Here are the 10 NPMD vendors mentioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrant (in alphabetical order).

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1. CA Technologies

The preeminent IT company has been a long-time player in network performance management and visibility. CA has built a range of products in this area for different use cases, relying on acquisitions in recent years to build its product portfolio. Its core products include CA Performance Management and CA Virtual Infrastructure for Infrastructure Manager, which can provide visibility into SDN and NFV environments. Related products include visualization tools such as unified communications, traffic analysis, and application delivery monitoring.

2. Cisco

Cisco dominates the enterprise data center routing and switching market, and it offers an integrated hardware-software combination of network monitoring and visualization products.

The main product Cisco offers is Prime Infrastructure, which enables traffic monitoring and configuration management of network devices. Other products include packet analysis, collaborative service monitoring, and network packet broker capabilities.

Cisco's newest product, Tetration, is an agent-based analytics platform that uses data from the silicon in Cisco's latest Nexus switching devices to provide deep analytics for application environments and network activity. Cisco offers many of its products through both the traditional licensing model and the new Cisco ONE subscription-based model.

3. Corvil

The Ireland-based company is targeting large financial services companies with its product. Gartner said in the report that one of the product's strengths is short-duration network monitoring, which is ideal for monitoring large amounts of traffic occurring simultaneously. This appeals to financial services clients, and it is also ideal for the Internet of Things. Gartner also noted that Corvil's software platform is a relatively unique model in this industry.

4. ExtraHop

Seattle-based ExtraHop specializes in providing tools to help customers analyze IT operations and the health of the overall IT environment, including products specifically designed to monitor and analyze network behavior. Gartner said ExtraHop was one of the first companies to provide network visibility to public cloud providers such as AWS and Azure. Gartner noted that ExtraHop's NPMD product is often purchased with other IT operations tools, but is rarely used as a standalone NPMD product.

5. LiveAction

The startup, founded in 2007, is a close partner of Cisco and has built a full-featured network visualization and analytics product called LiveNX in recent years. Cisco resells LiveNX and provides support to joint customers together. LiveAction has another end-user experience monitoring product called LiveUX. LiveAction's products are tightly integrated with Cisco's Nexus and Catalyst product lines. It also supports SD-WAN deployments and public cloud environments such as AWS and Azure. LiveAction raised $36 million in Series B funding in 2016.

6. NetScout

Gartner said NetScout is a market leader in network performance and visibility and placed it in the "Leaders" category of the Magic Quadrant. The company has a wide range of network monitoring products, including nGeniusONE, Infinistream and UC performance management products. NetScout is one of the leading suppliers of monitoring tools for hyperscale data centers, and its products support 40G and 100G Ethernet line rates.

7. Paessler

The German infrastructure monitoring software company has been aggressively pushing for international expansion in recent years. Gartner said the company is primarily appealing to the mid-market and small and medium-sized businesses because it prioritizes simplified ease of use in its products. It has also released a series of new features on its platform, including recently monitoring of public cloud networks and Docker containers.

8. Riverbed

Riverbed's focus is on WAN optimization, but in recent years it has built out network performance monitoring capabilities, including its central network performance management product line. Many of Riverbed's network monitoring products are tightly integrated with the company's adjacent application performance management products. Last year, Riverbed also acquired Ocedo to enter the SD-WAN market.

9. SolarWinds

Gartner said SolarWinds' core competency lies in infrastructure monitoring, and its service customers are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises. SolarWinds' NPMD products include network performance monitors and NetFlow traffic analyzers. The company combines it with its application performance management product line. The NPMD product works in hybrid cloud environments and supports end-user experience monitoring. SolarWinds was acquired by a private equity firm last year, and Gartner pointed out that this may bring uncertainty to enterprise management in the short to medium term.

10. Viavi

Viavi is listed as a leader in the Magic Quadrant by Gartner, but Gartner believes that the company's name change from JDSU to Viavi is relatively poor. The company's Observer Performance Management Platform is a complete set of NPMD products that provide visibility and analysis of network and server traffic. It is a packet-based tool with certain Cisco products and recently partnered with ScienceLogic to monitor hybrid cloud environments. Recently Viavi is building a channel partner network to expand its coverage.