OPTUS AND RIVERBED JOIN FORCES TO BOOST APPLICATION AND NETWORK PERFORMANCE

Managed service targets profitability and user experience quality with infrastructure monitoring

Optus has launched its Application and Network Performance Management (ANPM) solution, using Riverbed SteelCentral technology to help customers better monitor both on- and off-premise infrastructure like SaaS and hybrid cloud.

The fully-managed ANPM solution sees Optus’ analysts use near real-time Riverbed data to identify, troubleshoot, and work to resolve potential performance issues for clients before they affect end-users’ experience.

“Aligning customer experience and technology strategy is key to improving customer experience, as well as improving profit and revenue through acquiring and retaining customers and growing repeat purchases,” said David Caspari, Vice President, Product & ICT, Optus Business.

This was a key finding in the 2014 Optus Future of Business Report, which surveyed 550 decision-makers from business and government organisations and 5,000 customers to discover the strategies Australian organisations are employing to improve their customer experience and gauge where customers think businesses are succeeding and failing.

“Businesses need to provide a consistent experience, allowing customers to receive the products, services and support they want and expect, which means businesses are concerned with more than speed and availability of their networks, but also how an application’s performance is impacting on customer experience, productivity and profitability.”

Managed ANPM combines clever systems monitoring with human intelligence to detect and deal with issues as soon as possible, to minimise impact for customers and end-users. For our customers, that means they can provide a far more consistent user experience and mitigate against potential impacts to how they’re connecting with customers.”

As part of Managed ANPM, Riverbed’s SteelCentral platform proactively monitors application performance as experienced by end-users at different points throughout the enterprise network. Designed for “application awareness and visibility”, the platform includes a range of intelligent features to help customers understand how applications are performing from an end-user’s point of view, including:

• Dependency mapping
• User response-time monitoring
• Behavioural analytics
• Application status-based console

“As businesses increasingly seek to use IT in a consumption-based model, Optus’ new managed service is a significant differentiator, not only for itself, but also for every customer who uses it,” said Ian Raper, Regional VP, Riverbed.

“Business processes are increasingly dependent on applications which means the critical touch point is now at the user’s finger tips. The ability to measure how applications perform as the user experiences them, particularly across Wide Area Networks (WANs) – and address any issues before they’re even noticed is vital. As technology is meant to help not hinder, this new service gives Optus customers greater confidence their business critical applications will continue to perform as needed without skipping a beat.”

Optus’ Managed ANPM runs as an additional layer on top of its Evolve MPLS network platform, and is available to current Optus and Riverbed customers as of today.

“We’re committed to focusing on our customers’ customer, not just the technology,” concluded Caspari.

“This latest offering is just part of our effort to build a more intelligent network platform for our customers. By providing end to end network and application performance visibility we’re not only delivering a better experience for our customers, but also helping them better service their customers in a competitive market.”

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Media contacts

Steve Batten

Optus Corporate Affairs

T: (02) 8082 7850

E: media@optus.com.au

Mihika Gujral / Wendy Ko

Text100 Public Relations
T: 02 9956 5733
E: sydneyoptusteam@text100.com.au

For Riverbed Inquiries:

Harvey Ferle

Watterson Marketing Communications

T: 02 9929 7533

E:Harvey.ferle@watterson.com.au