Improving User and Machine Experiences Using Automated Incident Detection

By Tim Vanevenhoven, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships.

As customers return to stores, restaurants, and public venues, companies are increasingly leveraging mobile point-of-service tools to acquire and retain customers and run back-office operations. Whether it’s a mobile point-of-sale terminal, a portable receipt printer, or a wireless inventory barcode scanner, the business-critical roles played by these devices requires always-on network access and always-up application performance.

Standard IT troubleshooting and diagnostic tools examine segments of the device-to-network-to-application roundtrip, but they don’t provide an end-to-end view of the journey. They can’t tell if the user’s experience with an application is degrading or why.

The Aruba User Experience Insight (UXI) was developed specifically to tackle this issue.  UXI provides early warning of user experience degradation before it becomes impactful, and pinpoints where in the chain to focus troubleshooting. These benefits help keep applications and processes running without interruption, foster proactive maintenance to keep critical processes optimized, and save time by focusing IT troubleshooting when it matters most.

UXI works by launching into the network synthetic transactions that exercise target applications to ensure they are working correctly. Synthetic transactions can target a wide range of applications like picking requests, voice or video calls, and IoT transactions. UXI Sensors can broadcast these transactions over any LAN or WLAN, regardless of vendor, and report back to the Aruba AIOps monitoring service over a WAN or cellular network. These capabilities make UXI suitable for both temporary and permanent deployments.

AI-Powered Incident Detection 

Aruba AIOps applies machine learning to baseline application performance and can differentiate between out-of-normal parameters versus drifting performance that is within normal behavior. This avoids distracting IT and prevents chasing red herrings.

The user interface is simple and intuitive. Critical issues are displayed with lower-priority abnormalities in blue. When an incident triggers multiple out-of-normal conditions, say because of an unreachable connection, the alerts are bundled into a single incident to avoid alert fatigue. The operator can then choose to drill down to troubleshoot to the root cause.

Alerts can be tailored with automated responses and tuned with fine-grain precision to address customer needs and goals. A suite of alert services can be similarly tuned so recipients are updated in real-time and can respond appropriately to time sensitive events. 

Since UXI is network independent, it can be leveraged for both legacy and new deployments. A cellular connectivity option allows for rapid deployment and removal if the UXI services are only needed temporarily.

Delivering Greater Visibility into Mobile User Experiences

The latest UXI innovation is a mobile AI-based software agent that automates the collection, analysis, and remediation of performance issues in real-time using data observed from the very devices that are being impacted. For example, connectivity and voice performance might vary considerably while standing at floor level, moving on a forklift, or while picking at the top of a storage rack. Pulling data directly from a mobile device is the gold-standard for insights into performance and real-time user experiences.

Aruba teamed with Zebra Technologies, a leader in mobile device computing, to integrate the UXI AI-based software agent with Zebra’s Worry-Free Wi-Fi Edge Insights™ to expose device-level insights that are displayed on Aruba’s UXI dashboard. The combined solution analyzes real-time voice and data traffic, proactively flagging issues that could affect application, Wi-Fi connectivity, roaming, and voice performance.  Aruba UXI and its Incident Detection feature baselines application performance over time and automatically identifies and alerts when it detects service-impacting changes in behavior. A component of Aruba’s AIOps suite, these services reside within Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), the industry’s first cloud-native platform designed to automate, unify, and secure the edge.

The early warning provided by Aruba UXI informs remedial actions so that business-critical applications and end-user experiences are not impacted. The cloud-based service empowers IT to proactively resolve issues before they impact operations, and minimize alert fatigue, often without ever stepping foot on site. The real-time nature of data collection means that even transient events that might otherwise go unnoticed are captured and analyzed. The result is higher up-time, increased productivity, and more expeditious problem remediation.

Want to learn more about how Aruba UXI sensors powered by AIOps can help improve user experience? 

The Aruba UXI agent will be available in October 2021. For more information, or to participate in the ongoing early access program, please contact your Aruba representative.