VSS Monitoring: Putting Network Complexity In Its Place

Company:

Headquarters: Burlingame, Calif.

Technology Sector: Networking

Key Product: Distributed Traffic Capture systems architecture

Year Founded: 2003

Number of Channel Partners: 5 to 10 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: VSS Monitoring, through its set of taps and data capture tools, promises visibility into the deepest nooks and crannies of the largest networks to thwart problems before they reach end-users.

The Lowdown: If there's one thing VSS Monitoring knows about, it's visibility. For the past four years the Burlingame, Calif.-based company has been offering up its set of data capture and monitoring tools to help VARs and their customers drill down to the packet level to look into the network and find and fix problems long before the effects are felt by the end-users.

But VSS isn't a typical monitoring solution. The company uses what it calls a Distributed Traffic Capture systems architecture that through new levels of visibility promises to boost application availability by 120 percent, lower labor costs and network management by as much as 60 percent, decrease monitoring costs by 80 percent or more and boost end-user protection.

Essentially, VSS Monitoring gives users "the ability to capture the whole architecture and bring it back to a central system," said CEO Terence Breslin. VSS offers roughly 170 different tools to trap traffic at various levels and locations and bring it all back to a centralized area. Basically, it creates a layer of traffic capture and ultimately reduces the number of tools and licensing fees a company needs for real-time deep-drilling traffic capture and analysis.

Breslin said VSS's distributed capture system can see all the way down to OSI Layer 2, meaning it can intercept traffic before it becomes a problem. Additionally, traffic capture devices can be put anywhere for localized coverage and can also slice-and-dice the traffic for any monitor's protocol or speed to maximize ROI.

VSS is looking to the channel to bring the distributed traffic capture to market. In the last six months the company launched its North American channel program aimed at domestic enterprise solution providers. Though it, the company hopes to match the growth it's seen with its 35-partners in Europe and Asia. Though its program, VSS offers substantial discounts, a strong margin structure and support, Breslin said.

VARs can offer distributed traffic capture as part of their overall monitoring solutions, enabling their customers to utilize their exiting investment. Through that formula, Breslin said, partners earn margin from the same of distributed traffic capture devices while also offering customers customizable visibility. It also gives solution providers inroads into 10-Gigabit Ethernet infrastructures, where enterprises have deployed them and have no way to monitor them.

"Anywhere large Ethernet goes, that's where we belong," Breslin said.