Gartner Magic Quadrant 2016: Network Performance Monitoring & Diagnostics

by Joe Panettieri • Mar 8, 2016

ChannelE2E spends considerable time tracking RMM (remote monitoring and management) software for MSPs. But what about Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) solutions — where companies like N-able parent SolarWinds competes heavily?

Overall the NPMD market is growing about 10 percent annually, according to Gartner. Generally speaking NPMD solutions can monitor network traffic and infrastructure to mitigate outages and optimize performance, Gartner says. The solutions typically blend diagnostics, analytics and root cause analysis capabilities to complement monitoring, Gartner adds.

So who are the key market players and how do they rank? Here’s the Gartner Magic Quadrant 2106 for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD). We’ve included some “pros and cons” analysis from Gartner, along with ChannelE2E’s views on each company’s partner program.

Gartner Magic Quadrant 2016:
Network Performance Monitoring & Diagnostics (NPMD)

Gartner Magic Quadrant Niche Players

Niche rankings sorted alphabetically…

Automic

• Gartner Strengths: “Automic’s user interface (UI) provides a unique visualization of service health using a scorecard dashboard that caters to network operator workflows. Automic’s monitoring, integrated with WAN optimization and automation, provides a competitive advantage. Automic maintains a strong roster of technology partners and European channels, including BT, IBM and Microsoft.”
• Gartner Cautions: “Automic’s performance business is not growing, which may lead to reassessment of current NPMD strategy. This may impact resources devoted to NPMD R&D, sales and support. Plans to integrate monitoring with Automic’s release and workload automation core products are targeted to application development and DevOps use cases, with limited applicability for NPMD. End users cite dissatisfaction with Automic’s cost of maintenance and implementation as compared to other vendors.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: Automic has a partner program, but the company positions itself mostly for corporate IT operations, applications, development or specific offices (CIO and CFO).

Flowmon Networks

• Gartner Strengths: “Flowmon Networks provides a competitively priced option that would appeal to smaller and midsize organizations with flow-based monitoring requirements. Flowmon’s NPMD solution is highly scalable, with an ability to support 100G environments and 250,000 flows per second. Flowmon’s strong focus on security-related incidents enables it to provide its customers with a greater understanding of how malware, network abuse and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks affect network performance, versus traditional NPMD vendors.
• Gartner Cautions: “Flowmon’s solution is designed to support both NPMD and security use cases, but is not optimized for either use case. Company size and profile remain low from a marketing perspective, limiting growth opportunities. Support and maintenance is currently limited to 5×8 support based on European time zones, providing a challenge for non-European clients. 24/7 support is anticipated in 2H16.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: Flowmon’s partner program pushes beyond traditional resellers and embraces MSPs focused on cloud services.

Genie Networks

• Gartner Strengths: “Patented technology to identify application types from large datasets in a memory-efficient manner will be increasingly relevant with the proliferation of SaaS adoption by end users. Appliance and VM-based options offer customers multiple form factors. Attractive pricing and carrier-grade scalability continue to stimulate enterprise customer interest.”
• Gartner Cautions: ‘Tight CSP and APAC prioritization may compromise adoption beyond these vertical and geographical focal points, although the company’s European client base continues to expand. The product’s user interface is dated and limited when compared to more sophisticated products in the market space. Analytics capabilities are less sophisticated than competing products, centered on automated baselining to support anomaly detection and security-focused use cases.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: Genie Networks’ partner program focuses mostly on resellers. However, the company has had success with some big MSPs leveraging its platform.

InfoVista

• Gartner Strengths: “InfoVista’s strategy is to focus on and deliver increased scale to meet the demands of the carrier networks and large enterprises. VistaInsight and the 5View suite are multitenant, carrier-grade solutions optimized to meet the specific requirements of CSPs. Extensibility of the InfoVista solution allows it to meet sophisticated use cases that many other vendors cannot meet.”
• Gartner Cautions: “End users continue to report higher than average implementation and maintenance costs. InfoVista has a heavy reliance on European and Asia/Pacific (APAC) carriers, which make up the bulk of the installed base. Extended services engagements are common to meet specific requirements of target service provider customers.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: InfoVista works with some key partners across the globe, but appears to have limited reach into the U.S. channel ecosystem.

Niksun

• Gartner Strengths: “Niksun maintains a leading position at high speeds, with packet capture of more than 100G, with faster processing and more storage in the recently released Supreme Eagle hardware platform. Niksun has a unique strategy for machine-to-machine and Internet of Things (IoT) environments, leveraging its ability to scale. Niksun has recently added support for deployments in virtual environments, with virtual versions of its NetVCR product.”
• Gartner Cautions: “Niksun’s focus on both security and performance buyers may hinder its ability to service both markets effectively. Gartner has observed limited advances in application level visibility, analytics and root cause analysis. Gartner has seen limited market presence and visibility compared to other vendors in this analysis, which may limit their growth potential.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: A partner program is in place but we aren’t hearing much about it.

Paessler

• Gartner Strengths: “Paessler’s rapid development stream means that new and updated sensors are released frequently — on a quarterly basis. Easily accessible freeware options reduce the barrier to adoption and enable a low-pressure sales engagement model. Embedded clustering allows for fault-tolerant monitoring without the complexity of additional software components or third-party technology.”
• Gartner Cautions: “The packet sniffer module has limited capabilities, including an inability to save packet data to disk, and fewer supported application types and protocols than competitive products. Paessler focuses on selling via Web and resale channels, limiting their ability to meet specific large-enterprise requirements. Paessler has recently started targeting smaller and midsize MSP and SaaS providers, which may dilute their focus from their core SMB and midmarket enterprise heritage.”
• ChannelE2E Spin: Paessler has worked in and around the MSP industry for several years, and is well-known within the IT channel.

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