No Sea Of Tranquility Here

Just over a year ago we were reminded that the infrastructure behind your Internet operations matters, in a big way, by well-publicized crashes at sites such as Delta.com. If you recall, that one was crippled by traffic following its launch of a revamped web site that encouraged customers to purchase tickets online. It???s been relatively quiet on that front, but don???t mistake quiet for tranquility, says David Frigeri, senior director of technical services at Internet performance company Internap. As more and more back office operations and applications move to the Internet, service halts, creeps and crashes occur with relative frequency for internal end users???just not quite so publicly. Frigeri points to a case Internap is familiar with, where a large international bank delayed its launch in China because of Internet performance issues. He says that???s just one example where the lack of an expansive view of systems??? resources, application needs, and network capabilities are bringing promising initiatves to a sudden stop.

With the advent of more real-time IP applications, such as voice and video, the challenges of advanced backbone engineering for mission critical networks only increase. As does the challenge of bridging the gap between application and network groups that historically haven???t appreciated each other???s requirements and obstacles in delivering end-to-end high availability application performance.

Internap, whose new 10 gigabit Flow Control Platform premise-based intelligent route control product is deployed at the INTEROP NOC, is beefing up its services business with an application assessment offering to help companies better understand their application performance as they become increasingly reliant on running apps across the Internet. At just a little over a year old, its services group reports over 113 clients and solutions architects experts drawn from the likes of AT&T Networks and Global Crossing, who the company says can supply the advanced backbone engineering expertise that???s in short supply in most organizations. The vendor touts its heritage in Internet optimization, its world-class NOC, and its offerings??? ability to look at multiple simultaneous sources to pick the best path, end to end, as key advantages. Highlights of the service include predictive performance analysis and problem assessment.