As network technology continues to change, so have the roles and responsibilities of the people assigned to ensure its smooth operation.

Information-technology organizations are now integral parts of any enterprise, and the role of network operations staff has evolved to a place of much greater responsibility for business success. And that starts with a complete understanding of where data resides and how various elements of a complex network function together.

“No longer is the digital business wholly and solely confined to an IT department that is working just with their employees,” said Eric Smith (pictured, center), senior product line manager at NetScout Systems Inc. “They’re now part of the business; they’re not just a cost center anymore. They become cloud architects as well; whether it’s a public cloud or private cloud, they have to understand those relationships and they have to understand what happens when you spread your network out beyond your traditional data center border.”

Smith spoke with Peter Burris (@plburris), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, in Palo Alto, California. He was joined by Michael Segal (pictured, right), area vice president of strategic alliances, and they discussed the need for visibility across an enterprise network to rapidly troubleshoot problems and how NetScout provides the ability to trust information in real time. (* Disclosure below.)

Complex and geographically dispersed

The move from a singularly focused data center to an environment with multiple clouds and edge processing has created more challenges when a problem occurs. The issue could be located in a wide range of network locations, and this is where NetScout’s solutions target the need for visibility across a complicated, end-to-end landscape.

“This aspect of end-to-end really evolves into a geographically dispersed, very complex, and highly scalable architecture,” Segal said. “The traditional finger pointing in war rooms is now being expanded across multiple service providers, and you need to be able to effectively and quickly identify the root cause.”

That root cause represents the real truth for what is actually happening with data between systems. NetScout’s tools provide an opportunity to see packet data as it moves across a network, allowing users to rapidly identify where a problem is taking place.

“You know which elements are talking to which ones, and you can see that,” Smith explained. “That is very high-fidelity data, and you can absolutely know what’s going on. We like to call it the single source of truth, and you can quickly triage what the problem is so you can solve it.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: NetScout Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither NetScout nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE