Reducing Mean Time to Resolution – The Evolution of Extreme Intuitive Insights

“Is it a network issue or a device issue?”

How can one really tell when you and your team are dealing with:

• Not enough staff to cover all the tasks and jobs to be done
• Not enough budget to fulfill all of the new requests for networking and application demands
• Not enough talent pipeline to fill the open spots on the team that you’ve managed to secure?

The demands to resolve potential network issues are steadily escalating as organizations and employees are returning to a “normal pace” of business in the two plus years of pandemic life. So how can you be sure that the tools that you and your team are using can give you the network and client device visibility that you crave? With budget and resource constrained teams, you simply can’t afford to send a team member out into the field for every incident.

Last year, we introduced Extreme Intuitive Insights, a cloud-based application from our ExtremeCloud portfolio, to help solve this very problem. With this solution, companies using Zebra handheld mobile devices can instantly monitor, identify, isolate, and remediate issues that could impact Wi-Fi connectivity, roaming, application and voice performance. This solution combines Extreme’s network visibility to Zebra’s Mobility DNA solutions (formerly known as Wireless Insights).

Today, we are introducing version 2.0 which will include new features that we are excited to share!

Enhanced Dashboard

In line with one of the core tenets of Extreme Networks’ Infinite Enterprise concept, we’ve been focused on building consumer-centric experiences. Instead of spreadsheets and lists, we’ve created widgets and visual alerts to make it more obvious about where an issue with the device or the network might be. 

More Data about the Devices Connected to Your Network

Most troubleshooting applications only have IP or MAC Addresses for all the connected devices – which makes quick identification as efficient as finding a needle in a haystack. In this release, we’ve added more fine-grain identifiers, like device model, and added more client information, like physical location, battery life, software details, and NTP state. 

More device level intelligence

Here you can drill down even further to see what’s going on at an individual device level to diagnose if the issue could be a Wi-Fi Link, roaming, latency or VoIP link quality issue. 

“Where’s the guilty device?”

Ever have those days when users on the ground are complaining about an issue and asking for localized support, but you don’t know where they are in your warehouse, office, or retail store? With our Events page, you can see not only what event happened, but also where the device is to help you with issue resolution. 

Network AND device data, you say?

No hocus pocus or multiple tabs here. Within the Extreme Intuitive Insights 2.0 release, you can see Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) data from BOTH the network and device perspective. As a networking administrator, you would typically only be able to claim that the network was live and connected to a device. Now you can now match that network data to the device RSSI. 

All in all, each of these new features were designed to help our customers increase the accuracy of their troubleshooting efforts and reduce the overall amount of time and tools needed to figure out “is this really a network issue or a device issue?”.

I couldn’t be prouder of the work that our Extreme team has done to advance the capabilities within Extreme Intuitive Insights. And, of course, I’m incredibly excited about our continued collaboration with Zebra. If you want to learn more about this product, check out the Extreme Intuitive Insights Page.