How has it helped my organization?
Observer GigaStor has aided our clients in enhancing their network performance monitoring efforts.
It has significantly helped them understand their network environment and the delivery of business applications to their end-users. It's particularly effective in managing voice or unified communications environments.
Depending on sizing and its configuration, it can record network traffic over extensive periods, allowing users to retrospectively identify and analyze issues, which, in turn, helps improve their network environment and reduces the mean time needed to repair it.
While it's not directly related to enhancing security posture, it aids significantly in the threat-hunting process. If clients are concerned about specific network traffic, they can analyze it further to identify and address issues.
Moreover, Observer GigaStor's storage capacity meets our clients' data retention requirements. The storage capacity varies based on the model, ranging from 24 terabytes to 512 terabytes.
Its scalability allows clients to tailor the solution to their specific needs, whether that's deploying units across different sections of a data centre or multiple data centres, ensuring it can meet any customer's storage requirements within their budget.
What is most valuable?
There are many valuable features, but understanding end-user response times stands out. It provides a score-based evaluation of user experience, helping customers quickly pinpoint whether issues originate from the network, server, client, or application. Additionally, it facilitates in-depth analysis of application dependencies.
The retrospective network analysis capability of Observer GigaStor has been beneficial. It's a pivotal feature for network performance solutions. However, I prefer to consider the entire solution suite - GigaStor, along with GigaFlow and Apex - for comprehensive network visibility and monitoring.
So, I prefer to integrate all three solutions to provide the best visibility. They complement each other well, with Apex aggregating and correlating data from both GigaStor and GigaFlow to enhance environmental understanding and troubleshooting efficiency.
What needs improvement?
GigaStor feeds into Apex. So, the area where there could be improvement would be in artificial intelligence. For example, the incorporation of more advanced machine learning or AI capabilities could enhance its functionality. This improvement would further refine the system's ability to understand and interpret network behaviours and endpoint interactions.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been utilizing the solution for approximately three to four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is very high, for sure. I would rate it a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It is no problem. It's only for enterprise businesses.
How are customer service and support?
If things get complicated, they can get complicated. But then again, what you lose in support, you gain in getting the job done in the end because you get extreme visibility.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The complexity of the setup depends on what you want to achieve. I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten with ten being easy to set up. Because, it's quite easy to configure, but you do need knowledge. You do need to be a reasonable engineer to configure this properly.
We mainly do on-prem at the moment, but it doesn't matter. It can be in the cloud as well. So whether it's on-prem or in the cloud, it doesn't matter.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment depends on what you're asking the system to do or what you want out of it. It could be a situation where you're continuously configuring the device because your environment is constantly changing. So, there's a certain amount of time that will take for configuration. Like, the sales guys like to say it can be configured in hours, and that's true to a certain extent. But if you want the best out of the tool, you'll be continuously configuring it.
The same logic applies to the integration capabilities of this product. It depends on what you want, how much visibility do you need? The configuration itself is actually quite easy, but it does require some good skills. So, I will rate the integration capabilities a ten out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten. It's quite expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend Observer GigaStor to others for network visibility and security. It's pretty much the best system available in this space.
Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. It is like the saying, "If you are going to be expensive, you are going to be the best."
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller