Accedian Skylight Reviews

We had issues for a number of years with our carrier. I had dropped our bonded T1, 3 Mbps, to go to 100 Mbps fibre, minimum, to every location. We have 26 branches. Because of the scale and the magnitude of the capacity, it's fraught with not noticing whether we're getting our subscribed bandwidth, and we're paying a lot of money annually for our MPLS network. When I figured out the players like AT&T, and others in the mix, can have NNI, even though you think you have a 10 Gb connection—my backbone and my data centers are now connected to 10 Gb lines, my backbone is pretty much limitless—I wasn't sure what we were getting.

The scale of improvement from going to fibre, with this institution so used to having 3 Mbps, made everything look better. Except, I knew that when I need to put hundreds of terabytes of data across data centers and other components, I would have very specific expectations, and my intuition was that it wasn't even close. I was pretty much correct. We had video that was having trouble, and that was the "tell." When we started to look deeper, we had massive amounts of packet loss at higher capacities and smaller packet sizes. I've got a year or two worth of research at the highest levels. We needed a product such as the Accedian, that could knock it out—exactly where the issue is—in a matter of moments, and they were right. It's an extraordinary endeavor. I had an intuition that things needed correcting, and I was spot-on.

Accedian is a combination of SaaS and hardware devices. I have eight in my data centers and I have 26 branches, so the total we have is close to 85.

It has application and Layer 7 support, so that's going to be the next evolution. I had built an institution that I wanted to be number-one in Southern California, and I got bored and wanted it to be number-one in all of the US. When I talk to folks that used to work for, or who work for, Citigroup, they want to come work with me because we're doing things like NVMe capabilities of my sub-infrastructure that operates with 100 Gbps port speeds across state-of-the-art Aristas in a way that people can only dream of. 

As we prepare for the next five to 10 years, everything is based on network performance, latency, and application support. We have it set up in a way where we test the capabilities of the telco, the main provider, the local ex, the firewalls, and the switches right into our virtualized infrastructure in every single one of our locations. We virtually eliminate any finger-pointing. We know that if anything goes into maintenance due to an outage, and the failover is supposed to occur, we can instantly test it.

We called out AT&T on a 1-Gbps NNI that was supposed to support 60 folks—which in and of itself was a problem, because we're supposed to have 700 Mbps, guaranteed. When they failed over to a 100 Mbps, they completely saturated it and ran out of bandwidth. We were able to call them on all of this in real time. When we thought there should be 10 Gbps per 60 clients, we identified that they had unnaturally put all 60 through a 1-Gbps line.

The value is for networks on which hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent, where we have this level of intel. And we don't actually have to move around the network at a point in time, the way the world operated for the first 20 or 30 years of networking. We literally send traffic during the day and off-hours. We schedule these tests for repetitive performance, and the results are delivered in a digestible PDF report so that a non-technical person can see what passes and what fails.

It has saved hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can pay that money, but there's no guarantee you're getting that capability. 

We also can tell instantaneously whether or not we need to consider justifying more throughput or if we don't need what we have. There are probably several ways to look at what that is worth to an organization. However, if you have a system that's out in the cloud world, whether it's budgeting or mortgages, try to put a dollar figure on the capability to ensure the systems are working beautifully at all times.

In addition, Skylight has improved the interaction between my network, data center, and application teams, 100 percent. The layer side of it will be the icing on the cake. I will tell you the user experience before the user can tell you the user experience. We're fixing things for the applications team, and they don't know how or why. We're taking things that, in the mortgage world, historically had epic low rates in production, and doubling them. Just this week, I did something which changed a process that used to take between 30 seconds and a minute and a half and made it real-time, instantaneous. It's extraordinary.

Skylight brings the firewall and security teams to be very in-tune with the network teams, the telco teams, and the carriers that do the local. Any one of those could be finger-pointing at the other. We pinpoint exactly what the issue is, we tell them where it is, and it's pretty irrefutable. There are a time savings and there is collaboration.

You start buzzing away with NetFlow out of SolarWinds, and they'll tell you 17 reasons why it's something else. It's like playing a good game of chess. You think about every move two years in advance and, when it comes down to it, you end up with $50,000 worth of free gear, including, but not limited to, removing traffic shaping and policies that you know are strangling the network. I liken it to having the very best medicine for bronchitis or asthma or any type of breathing condition. This would be the medicine you would want. It opens up the complete "breathing" of the network, right down to every component, whether you're streaming video or doing other things.

You can simulate VoIP issues. As we move the organization to enterprise SIP, my biggest concern in my data centers is that if we ever had one-direction audio, we would never be able to figure it out. It would just take an extraordinary amount of time. Now we can simulate it, understand it, and resolve it in really short order. In fact, I have an engineer who came from LA Fitness, with 720 locations, and he said he took over a year and a half to figure out a problem, and he could have done it in under a month with this software.

When we moved small packets over certain routers, they would absolutely fail, and the world would tell me, "Oh, well, that's the way it is," and I said, "That's not possible." I proved that with higher caliber gear. We were able to move packets flawlessly down to 0.1 and 0 percent packet loss, which is unheard of, and maintained it. I proved it and showed the result. And then I did that again to ensure that the memory and the processing capabilities of the next-gen firewalls that are in every single one of my locations, are capable. And that was right through my primary firewall, to make sure they're capable of sending and adhering to certain traffic loads.

When I joined the company four-and-a-half years ago, I changed everything on a massive scale, to the point where if a vendor calls up and says something may not be running as expected, I politely explain to them that it's not even possible and that they need to take a look at their coding. I took apart every single piece of the puzzle, including four brand-new core switches that run the entire institution, where before we had three that were 10 years out of date; 120 switches, all Cisco, all brand-new. There was no stone unturned. When we run Accedian, if something isn't right, I can tell you exactly what it is and why.

In terms of reducing mean time to respond, it's done so by years. I don't even know how to estimate it. There are things that could never have been solved. When they tell you that they have put Quality of Service on your network, it could take you a lifetime to figure out and identify that the packet traffic and the tagging is converted because you have poor policy that converts everything into a particular tag. No one will believe what I'm saying in terms of saving "years to a lifetime," but you just have to see what this stuff can do. When used properly, there's no telling what you can do. I can say "from a year-and-a-half down to a month" and that's a reasonable metric.

For us, the most valuable feature is something called TWAMP that allows for real-time traffic in a way that is 10 times lighter than things like SolarWinds. It's in the sub-milliseconds of accuracy, and you can divide tasks so that you can literally see things like the tagging for Quality of Service. That had been incorrect with the carrier, but there was no way on this planet you'd be able to tell a carrier that they're wrong. I have dozens of scenarios where we found "No, that's not right," and got it resolved instantly.

I like the reports that are very standardized and so repeatable, which is amazing. I've got CSOs who, in a prior life, would be doing application support for institutions that are 10 times larger than ours, and they were unaware of what is possible. It's one of those solutions which completely educates really smart technical people as to what is possible. It's extraordinary.

Some of the Skylight applications are a little newer, and they're still moving through initial revs. There are certain bugs, but nothing is insurmountable. If you want to schedule something and do multiple tasks and multiple reports at one time, and it's erroring, it's a release or two away. It will just take a little bit of time for their user interface to get a little bit better.

I have been using Accedian Skylight for approximately six months. 

Their support is second to none. We use their Pro Services, which are incredible. I've had teams across the globe looking at ours, and I have tried to get support to tell them you don't have to show up every time we run a test. I've built some really large networks, the two largest for particular carriers in Southern California, but I don't get the feeling they're treating me any differently than they would any client. 

I have to be so specific about what I need. I'm going to be a dream client for them because I care about these things and I'm not just giving up because what's "good enough" isn't. It has to be perfect and this is the group you'd want to have for that.

We still have SolarWinds, but it just doesn't do what this does. It doesn't seem to be as forward-thinking. SolarWinds tends to buy third-party companies and bring them together. But Accedian has pretty much one purpose, and one purpose only: to monitor and improve the way packets flow across networks. Whether it's SD WAN, MPLS, you name it, they're trying to figure out the best possible way to monitor and maintain it in a relatively cost-effective manner.

It's priceless, because I had senior engineers at the telco crawl around for upwards of a year-and-a-half, at their expense. I can't even imagine the hundreds and hundreds of hours that they spent, whereas we put tools in place and it was instant.

The only thing I asked was that the telco get trained up simultaneously, because they didn't have this toolset in their purview. I said, "We'll get this thing done, but I need you with your multiple CCIE capabilities to pay attention, because this is really such a sophisticated tool that it's not for just a standard network admin." We have Pro Services to get us through any gaps that we may have, but I needed the telco to understand it so my CSO wouldn't come back and say, "Well, I understand SolarWinds, but I don't know if I believe this. Why do we have it?" I said, "You don't understand. Our telco just gifted us $50,000 worth of equipment, and it wasn't because they're into giving things for free. I pointed out, without a shadow of a doubt, that their equipment didn't have enough horsepower to run what we needed to run." It starts there and it continues.

We have found this to be a very valuable toolset, and has paid for itself several times over.

We took a look at some of the products where the entry point was north of half-a-million dollars, if you were lucky. And, of course, we had been running SolarWinds for years. The trouble I have with most of the solutions out there is they're very geared towards the double CCIE who says, "Yep, you're fine." That could be a situation where I would say, "That's interesting because we ran a test that shows that there's a bottleneck between S-2 and the data center at 50 Mbps, and that's a 200 Mbps location. I hit one button and it's done.

My team tells me that Skylight's UI and single pane of glass are adequate.

We're headed toward using Accedian for performance and traffic monitoring of cloud environments. That Layer 7 application will do the performance from quadrants and sections of our network to the outside world. They have capabilities in places like Azure and third-parties, kind of like Speedtest.net or Fast.com on steroids. We just haven't evolved to that yet. But that's what I expect. If I can get mortgage companies to install devices on their networks, it will be a homerun. They may choose not to do it. I'm able to reach out to the CIOs and CTOs at pretty large institutions and get them to contemplate the possibility of putting these in place. If I could put one of these in place and could hit a button in a second and get it sorted out, that would be the next evolution; to really press it in the cloud.

At this point, we just have to walk before we can run, but that is on the roadmap as we continue to evolve and utilize the services from Accedian. I completely understand why major, well-known companies, and 60 percent of the worldwide global telecommunications world, use this. You need to be someone like me who cares about 10-Gbps internet perfection to really bring it in-house and educate teams as to what it's capable of, but once you get there, it's pretty extraordinary.

In the old days, you'd run an EXFO test. They would show up at a branch in the middle of the night, hit a beam from their location to another one, tell you reasons why at 10 Gbps it can't test that high, or that their equipment wasn't right, or whatever. And they would say, "Yep, certified. Zero packet loss." But that's one moment, one time, yet technology and networks live and breathe, literally grow and compress, in real time, every single day of the year. That method was instant failure.

This system is the diametric opposite. We have things in-line and we have them on SAN ports, and the way we are able to monitor the traffic gives us a 100 percent understanding of whether the traffic is flowing as expected. If we want to do saturation tests, without moving one person or one body around the entire Southern California/Nevada/Central California area, on a whim, we can throw new data packets at will. That capability is extraordinary.

I would rate Skylight at 10 out of 10, and I usually never give better than a "B". But they do a really great job. They have killed themselves to get this thing right. Ten wouldn't be the norm for me. You've got to be extraordinary. Spend a second and a half with me and you'll understand why.

I use Accedian Skylight to diagnose performance or slowness issues on networks.

The solution has undergone a change - it used to be on-premise, but now it has transitioned to a SaaS solution. Despite this change, it still requires the purchase of some internal probes. The SaaS environment is currently not widely adopted and thus, not much is known about it.

The feature I used to like the most was its ability to decode layer seven protocols, although this is becoming less useful now that encryption is so widespread.

There should be an option to update and upgrade the solution to the new version without having to re-buy it. I have clients switching to other solutions. The old solution is great, but if you change your license to a new one, you have to almost re-buy it completely.

In a future release, the vendor should offer the NetFlow connection at the normal price. They are already providing the opportunity to connect NetFlow data, but it comes at a high price compared to other solutions.

I started using Accedian Skylight before it was required by Accedian, which was 10 years ago.

Accedian Skylight is a stable solution.

I rate the stability of Accedian Skylight a nine out of ten.

The scalability of Accedian Skylight is great.

I am using this solution as a contractor and it is typically used by engineers. There are approximately 10 people using this solution at the company I am working at.

I rate the scalability of Accedian Skylight a ten out of ten.

The support from Accedian Skylight is good. They are responsive and knowledgeable. They've always had the answer to my questions.

Positive

I have previously used Riverbed and NETSCOUT which are similar to Accedian Skylight. They are both quite expensive, but they offer similar features.

The difference is mainly in how the pricing is structured. Additionally, the use of small probes rather than physical appliances is a notable distinction. While Riverbed requires the purchase of an appliance, Accedian Skylight sensors can be downloaded as a virtual machine, which can be more convenient in certain situations.

The initial setup of Accedian Skylight can be very difficult for someone that does not know anything about networks.

The solution was previously well-regarded, but after being acquired by Accedian, the prices have significantly increased. This has made it challenging to sell the product due to its high cost. It is an expensive solution.

I rate the price of Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten.

This solution is geared towards on-premise setups, and would not be useful if the company plans to move to the cloud within the next two years, such as Google Cloud for example.

If the goal is to monitor bandwidth at remote sites and identify performance issues because the network is under the control, this solution is useful. However, if a company primarily uses cloud-based servers and does not manage the internet connection of its remote sites, the solution becomes less useful.

I rate Accedian Skylight a seven out of ten.

I have a positive opinion of the tool, but it can be challenging to set up. It is also limited in its applicability to certain use cases. I am familiar with the engineers behind the solution and have a good impression of them. However, I am not pleased with the fact that the company removed many features and raised prices after it was acquired by Accedian.

My company has many customers and needs to collect the performance stats of the devices, which is an Accedian Skylight use case. My company works with different Accedian solutions, such as Orchestrator, Sensor Flow, etc., and uses Accedian Skylight for device discovery.

What I like most about Accedian Skylight is that it's a UI application, so using it is easy.

I also like that the support for Accedian Skylight is helpful. For example, when my company needs help with installation, Accedian helps out.

The Accedian Skylight user interface still has room for improvement.

I've been working with Accedian Skylight for three years.

Accedian Skylight is a stable product.

Accedian Skylight has a helpful technical support team. Whenever I need support, I receive quick responses. Accedian support is excellent, so I'm rating it nine out of ten.

Positive

My company went with Accedian Skylight because Accedian fixes the products. Accedian also secures and addresses customer needs.

The initial setup for Accedian Skylight was easy. Anybody can install the solution because the excellent documentation makes life easy.

Deploying Accedian Skylight takes a maximum of four hours. The process can take one hour, but if something goes wrong, it could take four hours.

I don't deal with the financial side, so I have no information on Accedian Skylight pricing.

I'm working on the 20.4 or 20.5 version of Accedian Skylight.

My customers use Accedian Skylight on-premises.

In my company, ten people use Accedian Skylight.

My company is an Accedian partner.

I'd recommend Accedian Skylight and other Accedian products to potential customers.

My rating for Accedian Skylight is ten out of ten because it's an excellent product.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise.

The performance of Accedian Skylight is better than other vendors.

The UI interface of Accedian Skylight could improve.

I have used Accedian Skylight for approximately 10 years.

Accedian Skylight is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable.

I have used the support from Accedian Skylight and they are helpful.

I rate the support from Accedian Skylight a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Accedian Skylight is simple. Anyone can complete the implementation because the documentation is detailed.

When upgrading a customer's production network, typically it takes approx eight hours, though it may be as little as two or three hours depending on the customer's requirements.

The solution is worst the money. We have received a good ROI. If did not receive a good ROI we would not have been using it for 10 years.

I would recommend this solution to others. The solution provides good support and we have not experienced any problems. The support typically resolves issues within 24 hours.

I rate Accedian Skylight a ten out of ten.

My client uses Accedian Skylight for monitoring their IP network, that is, for application performance management and network monitoring.

I think the analytics features are okay. My customer also likes the interface, the GUI, because it's easy to operate.

Because of the policies in Vietnam, we cannot connect the system to the Accedian cloud. It would be good if Accedian could provide a local cloud.

In the next release, I would like them to focus on improving and adding more reporting features. This will help the operations teams.

I've been working with this solution for more than two years.

It is stable.

Accedian Skylight is scalable.

Accedian Skylight's technical support is acceptable, and on a scale from one to ten, I would give them a rating of eight.

Positive

The initial setup is not too complex.

The price is competitive overall, depending on the type of customer.

It's a good product, and I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.