Kentik boosts observability platform with genAI

Network observability provider Kentik today announced it has embedded generative AI across its SaaS platform to enable faster problem identification and resolution using natural language interfaces and guided troubleshooting workflows.

Kentik AI will give network engineers, operators, and architects the ability to troubleshoot networks faster and provide more actionable feedback for quick problem resolution, according to Kentik.

“Kentik AI is a long-term vision for us. Networks underpin the digital world, and it’s critical that they are available, but it is becoming increasingly complex with the volume and velocity of data to manage performance. Observing networks becomes a challenge,” says Christoph Pfister, chief product officer at Kentik.

According to Enterprise Management Associates, network observability is an evolution of network performance monitoring that provides enterprises with more intelligent capabilities for complex networks. “IT professionals recognized network observability as something deeper than network monitoring, moving beyond the collection and presentation of data that most network monitoring tools excel at today. They hinted at a system that turns data into knowledge and actionable insights,” wrote EMA analysts in the firm’s recent report, “Network Observability: Delivering Actionable Insights to Network Operations.”

“The first building block of Kentik AI is about enabling customers and users to basically harness the power of their data without having to understand all the details of how to query it properly,” Pfister says. “This is a conversational user experience for the process of troubleshooting and network analysis. It speeds up the process with insights that will make operations more efficient, because when the network is down or an application is down, speed is of the absolute essence.”

The company is launching the AI-assisted Kentik Network Monitoring System (NMS) that will help network teams optimize network health with real-time monitoring and alerting. Kentik NMS unifies traffic flow with real-time and streaming device metrics in one SaaS platform, which lets network engineers correlate heterogeneous telemetry data from distributed infrastructure components.

With this launch, the company is also introducing two GenAI-enabled capabilities:

• Kentik Query Assistant leverages a large language model (LLM) infused with network context that lets users ask questions about their networks in natural language, providing access to network insights that typically might only be available to teams with deep network expertise.
• Kentik Journeys provides network engineers with an AI-assisted troubleshooting workflow to solve complex network problems. Engineers can ask a question, analyze the response, and then ask another, more informed question, which would expedite investigations into the network performance issue.

“Kentik is helping us improve network operations efficiency and speed up MTTR,” said Kentik customer Brian Mengel, CTO at PenTeleData, in a statement. “We are reducing the total cost of ownership of network monitoring by consolidating advanced traffic analysis and metrics monitoring into one SaaS platform, and we’re excited about Kentik’s AI potential to compress and automate network investigations.”

Delivered as a service, Kentik helps network managers monitor the digital experience for end users across multiple platforms using AI and machine learning. Kentik AI is available now.