FixStream
Operational Analytics and Visualization Experts

With SDN encouraging big change in the data center; it is also changing the way IT services are built, consumed, and supported. Organizations are shifting their delivery model from vertically integrated stacks to dynamic and distributed software elements connected through SDN. However, enterprises face the challenge of understanding how and where their existing business applications are running so they’re able to plan the migration from legacy to SDN environments. Once in the SDN environment they need continuous intelligence to adjust policies based on the overall health and performance of each business process.

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, FixStream provides operational analytics software for real-time correlation and visualization across legacy and modern software orchestrated environments. “Most companies want an evolutionary approach where they can add SDN technology into or alongside their existing legacy systems,” says Sameer Padhye, Founder & CEO, FixStream. “Before they can make the change they need to understand how their existing applications are built across infrastructure so they’re able to plan the move better and also keep the new software orchestrated environment running optimally. That’s where our correlation and visualization capabilities can be helpful.”

FixStream’s Meridian™ software auto-discovers and builds a near real time cross-domain map of each business process and its underlying resources. Users can zoom from the highest cloud data center level to the lowest LUN or VLAN level to see faults and issues in just a few clicks. Each map shows where the process is running with all of its elements including application services as well as infrastructure components such as virtual and physical servers, storage and network resources. It also shows how these resources are communicating with each other as well as their detailed health including performance; fault and incident ticket information today as well as Capacity, Security and Compliance information in subsequent releases to enable rapid troubleshooting and planning.

Once Meridian discovers and correlates these elements together, IT teams assign a business or application process name to each group so it can be tracked over time.

We auto discover application services, physical and virtual infrastructure elements in the environment and build an interactive map

“Our particular angle of differentiation is around the way we build abstracted views of each business process running across the infrastructure at different levels of the hierarchy which users can select,” claims Ben Eiref, VP Marketing & Business Development, FixStream. “This can include both traditional legacy, SDDC and hybrid cloud systems.”

Meridian also includes a patented Flow2Path™ technique that traces the precise path of communication between each set of application processes. Flow2Path handles all the various layers of complexity including virtual to physical overlays and underlays, Layer 2 to Layer 3 transitions and various communication protocols and abstractions at each transition along the way. “This technology provides the baseline map upon which we’re able to layer lots of additional contextual information,” says Padhye. “We have our own native data collection and analytics capability and we’re also working with other IT Management firms and APIs to add additional sources of contextual information on top to increase the level of insight.”

FixStream plans to continue building on Meridian to help customers solve their most pressing problems. The company has conducted hundreds of feedback sessions with experienced IT executives and hands-on practitioners to make sure the platform delivers value quickly. “It’s been like opening up the flood gates. We invariably get great feedback on the maps and the user interface and we’re really encouraged also to hear how customers want to use it to enhance their security and planning capabilities. Ultimately it’s the ability to converge lots of different domains and layers of contextual information into a single view which makes what we’re doing so powerful,” concludes Padhye.