Understanding The Value Of Application-Aware Network Operations

This whitepaper by Enterprise Management Associates, commissioned by Gigamon, emphasizes the critical need for application-aware network operations in today’s digital enterprises. Traditional network operations approaches are inadequate for ensuring application performance and user experience, especially as applications become more complex, distributed, and encrypted. Layer 7 visibility is essential but difficult to scale using conventional deep packet inspection tools due to performance limitations and fragmented visibility.

To address these challenges, the paper advocates for application-aware Network Packet Brokers (NPBs) as a foundational component of modern NetOps and SecOps strategies. Application-aware NPBs can optimize traffic filtering, reduce tool oversubscription, enhance security monitoring, detect shadow IT, and improve user experience analysis by delivering only relevant, contextualized traffic to the right tools. This results in greater scalability, cost efficiency, and actionable insights into network and application behavior—essential for digital transformation initiatives.