Network Data and Big Data Analytics Together at Last

Traditionally, big data applications have been used to obtain analytic insight into large but otherwise narrowly defined sets of data.  While certainly effective at identifying valuable trends and patterns within any given information silo, most if not all of these solutions lack a truly comprehensive and holistic look into enterprise data.  The single major component that these applications have continued to overlook is “data in motion,” that is, the real-time network data traversing an enterprise network at any given moment.

Looking to bridge this visibility gap, network packet broker solution provider VSS Monitoring (News - Alert) has released its Big Data Visibility solution, a system combining in-motion network data with big data from external sources to allow for holistic analysis of that data as a single dataset. 

“Big-data systems are often blind to an invaluable resource: the data that represents every transaction in any networked business,” said Martin Breslin, founder and president of VSS Monitoring, in a statement. “Bridging this gap by linking network data with big data systems, enables a comprehensive view of the information that the business needs to make the right decisions.”

The Big Data Visibility solution utilizes two new advances in the VSS Monitoring vMesh Architecture to provide a richer view into a business’s market and organizational posture.  vSpool, a hardware module for the vBroker chassis, captures network data directly and delivers it to network analytics, forensics, and big data systems and content platforms to be analyzed either synchronously or asynchronously.  Meanwhile, vNetConenct software offers insight into physical and virtual workloads and the associated network traffic, including VMware and Cisco (News - Alert) virtual switches.  These two components combined will provide for enhanced business intelligence, forensics, compliance, and security assurance.

Such network data is groomed for relevance, optimized for analysis, and then encapsulated in an open standard file format, which can be stored directly into any storage appliance and opened and read by several analytics applications.  The end result is the elimination of multiple specialized tools and the attainment of comprehensive data visibility across an entire organization.

Speaking to how VSS Monitoring’s Big Data Visibility solution can bolster enterprise big data analytics platforms, Dwight DeClouette, vice president of communications, media and entertainment at Hitachi (News - Alert) Data Systems explained,   “Big data is not just about dealing with the pure scale of data. Service providers and enterprise customers are now looking for more comprehensive and ‘cross-domain’ insights to make informed business decisions. Hitachi Content Platform brings to market an unmatched level of capabilities for big data, including search, storage scalability, management and protection. By adding VSS NPBs powered by vSpool, end users can perform deep analysis on data in motion and gain a new level of visibility and intelligence from their own big data.”

Likewise, Dimitri Vlachos, vice president of marketing and products at Riverbed (News - Alert) noted, “By bringing together the Riverbed Cascade Shark continuous packet capture, analysis and storage appliance with VSS Monitoring’s vBrokers powered by vSpool, customers are able to gain a new level of visibility, flexibility and control over their Big Data, resulting in significant ROI and enhanced intelligence about their IT and network infrastructure.”