Cisco ThousandEyes empowers organizations to assure every digital experience across every network, everywhere, every time.
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TeamViewer DEX
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Formerly from 1E, acquired by TeamViewer, The TeamViewer Digital Employee Experience (DEX) platform finds and resolves IT issues before they affect users. This eliminates digital friction, avoids costly downtime and helps keep IT operations running smoothly.
As a service provider that is in multiple datacenters it's a great tool to use and leverage. Alot of smaller providers are only using NMS nodes that are hosted in their HQ or in spots that aren't where their content is hosted. Being able to run tests directly from your datacenters (between them or to the content provider itself) gives more accurate results. The downside is if you have no server infrastructure you'll have to install servers/machines to utilize it.
When we are needing to patch workstations for zero-day vulnerabilities or security risks, Explorer is our go-to tool to push out those settings quickly. We have a TeamViewer DEX server stood up in our DMZ to communicate with the workstations outside of our VPN, so we can push those settings or patches to devices without needing them to attach to our network. It's really nice to be able to communicate with the computers that rarely connect to our corporate network and ensure that they are still protected. We do have the TeamViewer Client installed on all of our internal servers in order to get inventory and licensing information, but we don't typically utilize the TeamViewer software on the servers for much else. A different team handles those computers and often requires change management, so expedited changes don't happen often there. Standard deployment and patching tools do the job.
Agent to Agent testing. Full round trip test. Have a customer using a Server Side API that is having an issue. Loan a Nuc, or have them install the ThousandEyes agent in their network. You'll find the issue guaranteed.
Device Layer vision - ability to see from the server, through the Firewall, switches Proxy and internet. Measure jitter, latency, response time, load time and see the path your packet takes.
Share your tests live. Provide the customer a link to a live test, they can see what you do, review your metrics and verify your tests. They can also use it as a tool to better their service. Build the trust and stickiness with your customers' most difficult users - the IT Operations team.
Validate your QOS and routes for VOIP, video conferences, and data traffic. Highly flexible and configurable complete with transaction-based testing, custom headers, calls and tools to mimic any scenario you need.
We have the product, we have a fair amount of wireless issues. You have to go through so many hoops, links and selections that I would think would've been impossible. Maybe if you have a specialized engineer, you would be able to use the thousandeyes product to troubleshoot a problem. But if I want to share with our knock, for example, would be very challenging because there is so many paths that you have to go and there is so many assumptions you have to do to actually find the root cause of the problem. What I would expect is maybe what they can do is implementing some AI today on this product to give some hints, "hey, this might be the problem because the data is there but it's difficult to find." We need an easier way to find how we can use the platform to point out where's the root cause of those problems.
They currently don't have all of their products incorporated into the web interface, meaning that we need a separate administration console for using their Shopping product.
The TeamViewer DEX Exchange is an online repository for common or useful instructions, but it is still a bit lacking. New instructions aren't published very often.
Writing your own custom instructions for Explorer has a bit of a learning curve if you aren't already familiar with SQL queries or their SCALE language. There is published documentation for SCALE, but I'd like to see them add a basic functionality course to their online training portal.
We will definitely renew and maybe even extend our usage of ThousandEyes. We have been using ThousandEyes now for a couple of years and it has shown us major benefits. With the new options it offers for SD-WAN for us it is a no brainer to renew our current licenses
There is definitely a learning curve to ThousandEyes, but once you understand how the client deployment works and how to set up monitoring, things go pretty smoothly. I think the initial setting up of clients on endpoints can be a little tricky though.
TeamViewer DEX has plenty of features and functionality right out of the box. They offer an Exchange web portal where you can go to download new product packs as they become available through consulting engagements and customer requests. Sometimes you might need to do something more specific or customized than what is available to everyone, and that's when your own knowledge is put to the test. Being able to write your own SCALE code would be invaluable, but takes a while to learn if you aren't already familiar with SQL, PowerShell, or a few other popular languages. Making it your own can definitely take some work, but it's worth it in the end.
You have online support from the tool itself 24/7 and they are very responsive. We also have a specific account manager and specific engineer assigned to help us with very specific questions for our environment. The level of response to our requirements is always super high. We have requested specific features to be added and these have been developed and introduced very quick tot he product (within weeks). Their DevOps and agile approach seems to pay off.
Our Cisco reps actually had someone teach us a few things about the functionality of ThousandEyes, and it helped a lot. The training was good and we had follow-up assistance as well when we had questions about the monitoring and reporting functions. Overall, we were satisfied with the training and support.
Our implementation was pretty straightforward, with some issues loading clients on endpoints. We didn't have any notable issues, and I don't really have any additional insights.
It is a similar product to Cisco ThousandEyes. Both solutions give good network monitoring and traffic analysis. But Cisco ThousandEyes works better with Cisco devices and has real-time alerts that are very useful. It also helps to see network problems faster and make troubleshooting easier. Cisco ThousandEyes is also better for checking SaaS and cloud apps like Azure, AWS, Webex, etc. It has endpoint agents that show network quality directly from user devices. The web interface is simple to use, so the learning curve is not too steep. Also, it has many monitoring points around the world, making it easy to check performance outside the company network.
Microsoft has good intentions, but they are often late to the table. On more than one occasion, we have seen Microsoft incorporate a new feature into their own products, but it's something that TeamViewer had already been offering for a year or more. By the time Microsoft adds a new feature, it has already been in our toolbox and even then doesn't seem to have all of the additional functionality that we get from the TeamViewer software. Currently, we're starting to see Microsoft's push for endpoint performance analytics, which TeamViewer DEX has already done impressively for some time now.
I think this product would be infinitely scalable since it's all cloud hosted and can support thousands of endpoints if needed. We are only using it for a limited number of endpoints, so we never really considered scalability.
ThousandEyes has helped us quickly isolate issues on some high-profile (within the organization) incidents and whether the network (internally or on the Internet) is at fault. If it is, it becomes easier to see the "where" of the issues quicker so we can move onto what the issue is faster. In the case of non-network related issues, it helps us get the appropriate teams or individuals involved sooner.
Being able to deploy configuration changes while devices are off-network was a real-life-saver for us during the sudden work-from-home scenarios we faced during the pandemic.
Reclaiming unused software licenses has provided some additional budget to use towards other products, and helps us to justify the cost of what we already have.
Using Experience to proactively troubleshoot performance issues not only reduces the number of help desk tickets but also provides a better work environment for our employees.
