Accedian Skylight for Crosswork Network Automation Data Sheet
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Accedian is now a part of Cisco
Accedian Skylight service assurance provides continuous visibility of end-to-end network and service quality, as well as per-segment visibility, all with microsecond precision performance data. This enables real-time SLA monitoring, proactive performance troubleshooting, and accurate performance analysis with a single-pane-of-glass GUI, integrated into the Crosswork ecosystem or as part of a standalone, vendor-agnostic service assurance solution.
Accedian Skylight delivers network-wide visibility and precise synthetic network and service testing for high-performance networks. This enables proactive assurance for efficient troubleshooting and assures SLA-backed differentiated services with exceptional customer experience—all while lowering the cost of operations and delivering critical business outcomes:
● Real-time SLA visibility and reporting for internal and customer stakeholders
● Proactively ensure the network performs to specification
● Rapidly diagnose root causes of network performance issues
● Reduce the operational cost of managing complex networks
● Drive automated closed-loop processes and use cases
Accedian Skylight complements the Cisco® Crosswork Network Automation suite by enabling carrier-grade performance monitoring, service assurance, and closed-loop automation. Now, Cisco Crosswork Network Controller (CNC) and Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) can drive automation decisions based on real-time network performance information and proactive alerting.
Skylight Sensors (range of software or hardware sensor/probe options) can be automatically configured in the network when new transport layers or service VPNs are being provisioned and service assurance becomes a part of the overall service lifecycle. Raw data is collected, and then streamed back to Skylight Performance Analytics, where it is correlated, analyzed, and made available via a GUI and APIs for real-time visibility into network and service performance.
Skylight Performance Analytics can also ingest other sources of performance data either directly from the network elements or from aggregators and collectors to combine and correlate with data from Skylight Sensors to deliver a single-pane-of-glass view of performance and service experience.
Accedian Skylight provides high-resolution monitoring for Layers 2 and 3, enabling a robust foundation for advanced assurance automation.
Using Accedian Skylight, you can achieve the following outcomes:
● Reduce operational costs and assure continuous high-performance of your dynamic network through automated deployment of service assurance.
● Improve network quality and agility through proactive monitoring and the ability to troubleshoot performance issues quickly, together with targeted network planning and optimization.
● Increase end-customer satisfaction and reduce churn through complete network and SLA visibility.
Table 1. Features and benefits
| Feature |
Benefit |
| Continuous synthetic testing/active probing for L2 to L3 |
Get an accurate view of network and service performance across all layers, bi-directionally, building a statistical model of network performance with accurate packet generation parameters that ensure the sensor data reflects real network conditions |
| Millisecond-level visibility and microsecond-level accuracy of sensors |
Detect performance issues that other solutions miss, with a level of accuracy needed for the most high-performing networks |
| End-to-end service and network performance visibility |
Combine and correlate sensor data across transport layers, services, and networks to get an aggregated view of end-to-end performance |
| Multivendor performance visibility |
Deploy sensors across heterogenous networks with equipment from any vendor |
| Single pane of glass for network performance data |
See all sensor data correlated with other sources of performance data in a single GUI and exposed via a single open API |
| Southbound API for performance data ingestion |
Enable the collection of other sources of third-party performance data, from a wide range of device types and vendors |
| Northbound API for performance data and alert sharing, integrated into the Crosswork suite |
Share performance data and alerts with the Crosswork suite and with other systems to enable closed-loop automation based on network quality and performance |
Accedian Skylight makes it easy for network operators to proactively assure network quality and use quality of experience as a competitive differentiator to drive new service revenue. This is enabled by the following capabilities:
● Automatically deployed sensors in software or various hardware form factors, enabling ubiquitous end-to-end visibility in a wide variety of multivendor networks.
● Accurate and granular sensor data from L2 to L3, creating visibility down to the millisecond sampling level for detecting transient problems with big performance impact.
● Correlation of sensor data across layers, combined with other performance data sources, to provide a single-pane-of-glass-view of performance.
● API-driven automation for performance visibility—automate deployment, configuration, and metrics insight across the whole network infrastructure.
● Seamlessly complemented with Cisco CNC, Cisco NSO, and other Crosswork suite automation/orchestration tools to quickly enable performance visibility as part of the service lifecycle and closed-loop automation remediation actions.
Billing terms and overage are explained in the license agreement.
Licenses are sold based on the number of concurrent testing or monitoring sessions (for synthetic/active probing) or number of flows per minute (for passive probing/capture). This license usage is tracked by the application in real time.
Usage can be checked via the application at any time. Skylight Sensors reports on license compliance regularly and will generate a quote when there is an overage.
Accedian Skylight is designed for different customer network sizes. Contact your Cisco sales representative to learn more about the system requirements matching your network scale.
Refer to the Ordering Guide, or for more information, contact your Cisco representative.
Cisco offers a 90-day software warranty.
Drive internal efficiencies and speed to market with Cisco CX Services for Accedian Skylight. With years of implementation experience across multiple customer environments and best practices, Cisco uses an agile delivery methodology to deploy Accedian Skylight in your environment. We’ll work with your team in pre- and post-production environments and acceptance testing, making sure everyone understands and adopts the right use cases. We’ll also work to deliver knowledge transfer and add-on services as needed, such as upgrades and/or accelerators. With Cisco by your side, you’ll get peace of mind that your team understands, adopts, and operationalizes value-added use cases.
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| New or revised topic |
Described in |
Date |
| Updated |
Complete document |
December 2023 |