The GigaOm Radar evaluates vendors based on execution, innovation, and platform maturity, not just features, giving NetOps teams a clear view of which solutions can meet the demands of modern environments.

This year’s report highlights a clear shift: observability has moved beyond monitoring. The report highlights a shift toward platforms that turn data into understanding and understanding into action.

Visibility Is the Foundation. Fragmentation Is the Barrier.

Network teams have done the hard part. Over the past decade, they’ve built out visibility across packets, flows, infrastructure, endpoints, and cloud environments. There is no shortage of data.

The problem is not a lack of data. It’s that most of it remains fragmented. Packet tools, flow monitors, infrastructure platforms, and endpoint solutions each provide a different version of reality. During incidents, teams don’t lack information – they’re reconciling conflicting answers.

That’s not an observability problem. That’s an architecture problem. The challenge is no longer collecting more data. It’s turning fragmented data into coherent, actionable insight.

How the GigaOm Radar Evaluates Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Maturity

The Radar makes this shift explicit, moving away from device-centric monitoring toward platforms that combine end-to-end visibility with intelligence and action. The expectation is no longer just to collect telemetry, but to reduce the manual effort required to interpret and act on it.

To meet that standard, platforms must:

• Collect multiple telemetry types across the entire environment
• Correlate that data into a single, consistent view
• Apply intelligence to identify root cause and drive next actions

This is the difference between monitoring systems and decision systems. And it highlights a clear challenge in the market: fragmented telemetry produces fragmented insight, and the operator becomes the integration layer.

Why Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Is Positioned as a Leader

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s position as a Leader and Fast Mover reflects more than alignment with market direction. It reflects a fundamentally different approach to solving the problem the Radar highlights.

This positioning is not incidental. It is the result of an architecture designed specifically to address the fragmentation that limits most observability platforms today.

At the core of the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ platform is full-fidelity telemetry across packets, flows, infrastructure, and user experience, delivered not as separate tools, but as a unified system.

By contrast, parts of the market remain divided across incomplete approaches. Some vendors emphasize packet-level depth but struggle to scale or extend visibility. Others prioritize flow-based monitoring, trading precision for efficiency and scalability. Many claim to be platforms but still rely on loosely integrated components that require manual correlation.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ eliminates those tradeoffs by capturing and correlating:

• Packets for deep, ground-truth analysis
• Flows for scalable visibility and trends
• Infrastructure metrics for network and device health
• End-user experience data for real-world performance

These are not just multiple data sources. When pulled together in the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Data Store, they form a single, consistent model of how the network behaves.

That distinction becomes clear in real-world operations. Instead of stitching together partial answers from multiple tools, teams gain a unified view of cause and effect across the entire environment. Troubleshooting accelerates, false leads are reduced, and resolution becomes far more predictable.

From AI Insight to Autonomous Action

Because Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ operates on unified, full-fidelity data, it can apply AI in a way fragmented platforms cannot.

As reflected in the Radar, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ combines multiple forms of AI to move from analysis to action:

• Causal AI to identify root cause across domains
• Predictive AI to anticipate issues before they escalate
• Generative AI to deliver clear, explainable recommendations
• Agentic AI to move from assisted operations toward autonomous execution

This progression is critical. Many platforms can surface signals, but without consistent, correlated data, AI outputs remain incomplete or inconclusive.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s AI operates on correlated telemetry across packets, flows, infrastructure, and user experience within the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Data Store. That foundation provides the context needed to connect signals into a single explanation, reduce manual investigation, and accelerate resolution.

As Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ advances its agentic AI capabilities, the platform is increasingly able not just to explain and recommend, but to act within governed boundaries, helping teams move from reactive troubleshooting toward proactive, and ultimately more autonomous, operations.

Why This Matters Now

Modern environments expose the limits of fragmented observability. Zero Trust, encryption, SaaS, and distributed users make it impossible for any single data source to explain what’s happening end to end. This is where most approaches break down.

Packet data provides depth but not scale. Flow data scales but lacks precision. Endpoint data shows impact but not always cause. Without correlation across all of these, teams are left stitching together incomplete answers during critical incidents.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ is built to solve this directly.

By unifying full-fidelity telemetry across packets, flows, infrastructure, and user experience into a single, correlated data model, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ gives NetOps teams a complete and consistent view of the entire environment. Instead of reconciling conflicting data across tools, teams can move directly from detection to root cause to resolution.

That unified foundation is what makes observability actionable, enabling faster troubleshooting, more reliable insights, and a clear path toward automation.

The Bottom Line

The 2026 GigaOm Radar for Network Observability confirms a shift already underway: visibility alone is not enough. The real value lies in turning that visibility into understanding, and that understanding into action.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s position as a Leader and Fast Mover reflects a platform built for that reality. By combining full-fidelity telemetry, unified data, and AI-driven intelligence, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ enables organizations not just to observe their networks, but to operate them with clarity, speed, and a clear path toward automation.

Check out the GigaOm Radar here: 2026 GigaOm Radar for Network Observability

That challenge becomes more pressing as certificate lifetimes get shorter. What was recently a 398-day cycle is now being reduced toward a 47-day maximum. Certificates that were reviewed periodically now require more frequent attention, increasing the likelihood of missed renewals, configuration drift, and more time spent troubleshooting when something breaks.

Most organizations already have tools to issue and renew certificates. The challenge isn’t lifecycle management. It’s confirming that certificate updates are applied correctly and do not introduce issues in production.

Why TLS Lifetimes Are Shrinking and What It Means for Operations

The move toward shorter TLS certificate lifetimes is being driven by the and enforced by major browser vendors like Google, Apple, and Mozilla. The goal is to reduce risk.

Shorter lifetimes limit the window of exposure if a certificate or private key is compromised and reduces reliance on long-lived credentials that can drift out of compliance. Reduced lifetimes also push organizations toward more automation and consistent management practices.

The operational impact of these changes is straightforward: certificates are replaced more frequently, and validation windows are shrinking. As a result, the pace of change increases – certificates are updated more often and small inconsistencies surface more quickly.

When issues occur, teams still need to determine:

• Which certificate is in use
• Whether the correct certificate was presented
• If expected protocols and ciphers were negotiated

Logs and alerts can point to symptoms, but they rarely provide the context to resolve issues quickly. As certificate changes happen more often, that lack of context becomes harder to work around.

Where AppResponse Fits

As TLS certificate lifetimes move toward 47 days, teams are required to validate certificate changes far more frequently. The challenge isn’t just managing renewals. It’s confirming that those changes are working as expected in production.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ AppResponse reduces the time required to verify certificate changes and troubleshoot issues by making certificate behavior visible in real traffic.

• Understand certificate usage in real traffic: AppResponse shows which certificates are actively in use and alerts when they approach expiration, helping teams focus on the certificates that affect production.
• Detect configuration drift from frequent updates: More frequent certificate rotation increases the likelihood of inconsistent configurations. AppResponse detects weak or non-approved ciphers and TLS versions before they cause outages or failed validations.
• Validate certificate deployments during TLS handshakes: AppResponse exposes handshake behavior in detail, allowing teams to confirm that newly deployed certificates are presented correctly.
• Identify trust chain issues introduced during certificate rotation: Frequent updates increase the chance of missing intermediates or misconfigured chains. Packet-level visibility allows teams to confirm the full certificate chain is presented correctly and pinpoint where validation breaks down.

These capabilities apply across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments, allowing teams to verify certificate changes and resolve issues quickly as certificate lifecycles accelerate.

Managing TLS at a Faster Pace

The shift to 47-day TLS certificates increases the frequency of change and reduces the tolerance for error. AppResponse provides the visibility teams need to confirm that certificate updates are working as expected and to identify issues quickly when they are not.

See How AppResponse Supports 47-Day TLS Certificate Lifecycles

To discover how AppResponse helps you monitor certificate expiration, validate certificate deployments, and identify issues introduced by more frequent certificate changes, visit Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ AppResponse.

Unified Communication (UC) enables seamless collaboration through messaging, video conferencing, and file sharing, but Zero Trust can turn that collaboration experience into a challenge for IT. Encrypted tunnels and segmented networks hide traffic details IT teams rely on to diagnose problems. SaaS applications often bypass traditional monitoring points altogether. When something goes wrong, IT lacks the visibility to pinpoint the cause. To users, this simply looks like frozen meetings, dropped calls, and unresponsive support.

This is the Zero Trust Collaboration Gap—when security improvements undermine the collaboration tools people rely on every day.

Collaboration Is Business Critical

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵs like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Webex have become essential to daily operations. For many employees, these platforms are the workplace—where meetings happen, projects move forward, and customer interactions take place. Even small disruptions in voice or video quality can stall productivity, frustrate employees, and damage client relationships.

In Zero Trust environments, these UC disruptions become harder to diagnose:

• Encrypted traffic hides root cause. With traffic fully encrypted, IT teams lose the ability to see inside packets, making it nearly impossible to distinguish between application, network, or device problems.
• Overlay networks complicate troubleshooting. ZTNA, SASE, and VPN tunnels add layers of abstraction that mask where latency or jitter is introduced, leaving NetOps without a clear performance baseline.
• SaaS apps bypass monitoring points. Cloud-based UC traffic often flows directly to providers, skipping data centers and traditional monitoring appliances, which leaves IT blind to performance issues.
• Remote work increases variability. Employees connect from home, hotels, or coffee shops, each using different ISPs and Internet paths. That unpredictability makes reproducing and diagnosing UC issues far more complex.

The outcome is familiar: increased mean time to resolution (MTTR), finger-pointing between application, network, and security teams, and frustrated users who lose confidence in IT.

Why User Experience Matters

Zero Trust isn’t only about security; it’s about enabling modern work. Employees need to collaborate seamlessly from anywhere, and customers expect uninterrupted digital engagement. If security controls interfere with productivity, leaders won’t view Zero Trust as a success.

This is why validating the user experience is just as important as enforcing policy. Security teams may be confident that Zero Trust controls are working as designed, but if Zoom calls are choppy or WebEx meetings freeze, the business won’t see the value.

Enterprises need a way to maintain UC and SaaS performance in encrypted, segmented environments without weakening the protections Zero Trust provides.

How Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ NPM+ Closes the Gap

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ NPM+ is designed to work in Zero Trust environments. By capturing traffic before encryption at the endpoint, NPM+ restores visibility without breaking security.

With NPM+ and its UC Module, IT teams can:

• Measure real user experience. Unlike synthetic tests or aggregate network stats, NPM+ captures actual voice and video quality metrics at the endpoint — for Teams, Zoom, Webex, and other collaboration tools. This means IT sees what users experience in real time, not an approximation.
• Diagnose across encrypted paths. Zero Trust tunnels, overlays, and SaaS traffic often obscure root cause. NPM+ isolates whether performance issues stem from the application itself, the user’s device, or the network path, even when traffic never passes through the data center.
• Reduce escalations. Armed with definitive endpoint-level data, IT can quickly prove where the issue lies. This ends finger-pointing between teams, reduces time wasted in war rooms, and accelerates mean time to resolution.

Because NPM+ is delivered through the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Unified Agent, teams avoid the complexity of multiple agents. One lightweight footprint supports  Digital Experience, network, and acceleration modules, including all NPM+ modules, scales to thousands of endpoints, and can be managed centrally.

The result: IT Ops has the clarity to support collaboration in Zero Trust environments, and employees have the seamless experience they expect.

Business Benefits

Solving the Zero Trust collaboration gap isn’t just about reducing IT headaches—it directly impacts how employees work, how leaders make decisions, and how the business performs. By restoring visibility into UC and collaboration tools, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ NPM+ delivers clear advantages:

• Faster resolution. IT identifies and fixes UC performance problems at the source, even when traffic is encrypted or segmented. This reduces MTTR, minimizes downtime, and ensures users stay productive.
• Consistent productivity. Collaboration tools like Teams, Zoom, and Webex remain smooth and reliable. Employees spend less time dealing with frozen calls or dropped meetings, and more time engaging customers, partners, and colleagues.
• Stronger executive confidence. With clear evidence that Zero Trust strengthens protection without compromising performance, IT leaders demonstrate value to executives, auditors, and regulators. This builds trust that Zero Trust is supporting – not hindering – the business.
• Lower support costs. By giving IT teams definitive data at the endpoint, NPM+ reduces escalations, avoids unnecessary finger-pointing, and cuts the volume of help desk tickets. Fewer war-room calls mean more efficient IT operations and cost savings.

Zero Trust doesn’t have to force a choice between security and collaboration. With Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ NPM+, enterprises can achieve both—protecting the business while ensuring seamless employee experiences.

Security and Collaboration Together

Zero Trust is essential for protecting modern enterprises. But stronger security that undermines productivity is not success.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ NPM+ and the UC Module ensure organizations can adopt Zero Trust with confidence, maintaining both security and collaboration. By validating the network experience across encrypted, segmented, and remote environments, NPM+ helps IT deliver the outcomes business leaders expect.

Because Zero Trust isn’t just about keeping threats out. It’s also about keeping the business moving.

Next Steps

Want to see how Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ helps enterprises overcome the Zero Trust experience gap?

• Download our Solution Brief on NPM+ for Zero Trust Visibility
• Request a demo today

Network traffic is growing at up to 25% annually, according to Nokia Bell Labs, which forecasts a 22–25% compound annual growth rate. Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures are expanding faster than teams can instrument them. Tool sprawl has fractured visibility. And alert fatigue is rising, with EMA Research reporting that 60–80% of alerts are false or low-value.

Traditional monitoring tools were never designed for this level of complexity. They’re reactive, fragmented, and fail to connect the dots fast enough to protect user experience and business performance.

To meet these challenges, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ has launched its third major product release of the year: new AI-powered Intelligent Network Observability solutions that significantly expand the value of the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ. Backed by strong demand—including 92% year-over-year growth in observability bookings in the first half of 2025—these innovations are built to help IT teams modernize operations, act faster, and stay ahead of disruption.

Beyond Monitoring: Intelligent Network Observability Delivers

Intelligent Network Observability is a strategic evolution that empowers IT teams to move faster and see further. At its core there are four key elements:

• Full-Fidelity Telemetry: Capture every packet, every flow, and every device metric – without sampling or gaps – across data center, virtual, cloud, on-prem, and edge.
• Correlated Context Across Domains: Bring together network, application, user, and infrastructure data for cross-domain insights that accelerate root cause diagnosis.
• Adaptable, Explainable AI: Go beyond anomaly detection with AI that understands cause and effect, predicts impact, and guides response, clearly and confidently.
• Automate Resolution: Turn AI insights into action with intelligent workflows and guided fixes that resolve issues proactively, cut MTTR, reduce ticket volume, and keep employees productive.

How Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Powers Intelligent Network Observability

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s approach centers on two key capabilities: centralized high-fidelity telemetry and integrated intelligence.

Unified Observability Begins with a Shared Data Store

The Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Data Store is a high-scale, telemetry-agnostic solution that unifies data from every layer of your IT environment. Packets from AppResponse, flows from NetProfiler, device metrics from NetIM, and user insights from NPM+ and Aternity – all feed into a common, full-fidelity, virtualized data repository.

This centralized model eliminates silos, ensures consistent context, and makes historical and real-time data immediately available to drive business and IT decisions.

Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ IQ: AI Built for Real Network Operations

Layered on top of that telemetry is Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ IQ, an intelligent engine that turns data into action. Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ IQ blends causal, predictive, generative, and agentic AI to surface insights, not just alerts. It explains root causes in plain language, highlights risk, automates workflows, and even suggests preventative actions—all tailored for NetOps and SecOps.

The Telemetry Core of Intelligent Network Observability

At the heart of Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Intelligent Network Observability solution is a unified telemetry fabric built on four essential products. These solutions collect and contextualize full-fidelity data, feeding it into the Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ Data Store, where Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ IQ transforms it into actionable intelligence:

• AppResponse: Real-time packet capture and transaction-level analysis provide deep forensic network visibility and application-aware diagnostics.
• NetProfiler: Scalable, hybrid flow monitoring uncovers traffic anomalies, maps SD-WAN overlays, and enables risk-based alerting and analytics.
• NetIM: Monitors IT infrastructure with real‑time mapping of application network paths, visualizing  network diagrams, and tracking configuration changes to ensure network health and availability.
• NPM+: Lightweight, distributed telemetry extends deep packet inspection to cloud, remote, and Zero Trust environments with endpoint-level insights.

Together, these products form the foundation of Intelligent Network Observability, delivering complete visibility, contextual awareness, and the intelligence needed to act with confidence.

Real-World Impact for NetOps and SecOps

Intelligent Network Observability isn’t a buzzword—it’s a force multiplier for NetOps and SecOps. It goes beyond simply spotting problems to instantly understanding them, clearly explaining impact, and resolving them faster. By combining AI and automation, it transforms raw data into actionable insights and guided next steps that cut through the noise, reduce manual effort, and empower teams to act with confidence.

With Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ, teams can:

• Visualize Complex Architectures: Gain a complete view of remote, edge, hybrid and cloud networks to ensure seamless performance, uncover hidden dependencies, and proactively identify risks.
• Streamline Collaboration: Unite NetOps, SecOps, and Cloud teams with a shared, AI‑driven operational view that eliminates silos and accelerates decision‑making.
• Accelerate Incident Response: Pinpoint root causes faster with guided AI  automation, reducing MTTR across both performance and security incidents.
• Gain Historical Insight: Leverage long-term telemetry retention to analyze trends, investigate threats, and inform architectural decisions.

By aligning visibility with intelligence, Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ transforms how NetOps and SecOps teams work to breakdown operational silos, speed action, and drive better outcomes across the enterprise.

Smarter Operations. Exceptional Experiences.

As complexity rises and user expectations continue to soar, legacy monitoring tools simply can’t keep up. Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Intelligent Network Observability equips IT teams with the tools they need to not only keep pace, but lead.

With Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ, organizations gain:

• Unified Visibility: Full-fidelity insights across your organization, from edge to data centers to clouds.
• Faster Resolution: From anomaly detection to root cause in record time.
• AI-Powered Clarity: Guided diagnostics and explainable insights that eliminate guesswork.
• Future-Proof Scale: Elastic performance and adaptive intelligence for evolving architectures.

This isn’t just the next evolution in observability. It’s the foundation for a smarter, more responsive IT strategy. Intelligent Network Observability doesn’t just show you what’s happening. It tells you why, and what to do next.

For more information, visit Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ.com.

From Forensics to Foresight

Packets remain the gold standard for network analysis. They offer an unfiltered, high-fidelity view of interactions across the network, empowering IT to troubleshoot, investigate security incidents, and validate application performance with confidence. AppResponse captures every packet, analyzes data in real time, and retains it for historical review, enabling both immediate triage and deep forensic insight.

Whether troubleshooting a video conference issue or auditing a security incident, AppResponse gives teams the clarity and confidence to act decisively. By unifying continuous packet capture with real-time analytics, long-term storage, and rich visualization tools, AppResponse allows organizations to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive and intelligent network management:

• Persistent packet capture with high-speed retention
• Visual dashboards for time-series and application-layer insights
• Easy integration with Packet Analyzer Plus for in-depth trace file analysis

It’s more than a monitoring tool. It’s a forensic engine with operational speed.

Built to Scale: Performance Without Bottlenecks

At the heart of this release is the next-generation xx90 hardware appliances, purpose-built for organizations that demand high throughput, high resolution, and full visibility – all at once. AppResponse 11.21 leverages the xx90 hardware to deliver exceptional performance, including:

• Over 50 Gbps of sustained packet capture—a 20% to 140% increase over the xx80 family
• 60 Gbps of ASA (Application Stream Analysis) throughput—a 20% to 70% increase over xx80
• Support for up to 6 million TCP connections per minute—a 20% to 70% increase over xx80
• Scalable storage exceeding 2 PB with modular Storage Units (SUs)

What sets the new xx90 hardware and 11.21 software update apart is not just raw speed, but concurrency. Unlike other solutions that force a trade-off between capture and analysis, AppResponse 11.21 on xx90 appliances performs packet capture and analysis simultaneously. This enables real-time analytics without compromising forensic depth, ideal for fast triage and deep post-incident analysis.

AppResponse 11.21 at a Glance

The table below highlights the performance capabilities of the AppResponse 11.22 release across the xx90 appliance family, including improvements in capture and analysis as well as connection handling. Performance gains over previous-generation Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ appliances are in parentheses.

* 60 Gbps performance based on AppResponse 11.22 release

Broad Deployment Support

AppResponse 11.21 isn’t limited to the new xx90 appliances. The release also supports existing xx80 appliances as well as virtual deployments on hypervisors and cloud-based implementations in AWS, Azure, and GCP. This flexibility ensures that organizations can adopt AppResponse 11.21 in the way that best aligns with their infrastructure strategy – whether it’s modernizing with new high-performance hardware or extending visibility into cloud workloads.

Simplified Access with Flex Licensing

To meet the needs of growing and dynamic organizations, AppResponse 11.21 and the xx90 appliances are part of Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ’s Flex Licensing options. This subscription-based model allows customers to:

• Deploy capacity where needed as requirements change – across hardware, virtual, or cloud
• Simplify budget planning with predictable OPEX costs
• Future-proof architecture and product transitions
• Scale usage up or down over time with pooled license options

Flex Licensing aligns your investment with your operational reality, whether you’re optimizing for performance, resilience, or an AIOps strategy.

Scalable Observability with a Vision for the Future

AppResponse 11.21 offers more than high-speed packet analysis—it lays the groundwork for AI-driven IT operations. By combining high-fidelity data, scalable infrastructure, and seamless integration with Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ IQ, organizations gain intelligent automation, context-rich incident response, and predictive analytics that streamline performance management and reduce operational noise.

Whether you’re managing a single data center or a global hybrid infrastructure, AppResponse ensures:

• Packet fidelity without compromise
• Real-time analytics across distributed environments
• Deployment flexibility—from hardware to cloud

If your organization is looking to modernize operations and scale with confidence, AppResponse 11.21 is ready to lead the way.

Want to see AppResponse in action? Contact your Ä¢¹½¶ÌÊÓƵ representative or visit our website to schedule a demo today.