State-Affiliated Insurer Gains Virtual Network Visibility with NETSCOUT

Customer Profile

This State-affiliated Insurer specializes in offering Workers Compensation insurance coverage needed by small- and medium-sized businesses.

State law created this affiliated-Insurer model for the purposes of providing a reliable source of Workers Compensation insurance for employers and security for the payment of benefits to covered workers. The law provides for the Insurer to be self-supporting from premium and investment earnings.

In providing insurance to cover employers and injured workers for many decades, this Insurance Fund offers a legacy of supporting small business growth in this Western U.S. State’s economy, as well as serving residents in need of Workers Compensation coverage and care.

Business Challenge

The Insurer uses a heavily trafficked public Web portal to help deliver its Workers Compensation insurance services to small- and medium-sized employers (and even a few larger State firms), the injured workers reporting those claims, and the Insurance Agents and Medical Providers affiliated with processing claims and delivering needed care. In addition to providing State Workers Compensation information and guidelines, the Web portal allows users to apply for policies, file claims, request proof of insurance, and process payments.

In improving access to this one-stop Workers Compensation Web portal, the Insurer’s IT team recently updated the website to support mobile device access for employers, injured workers, and other users.

In supporting business operations, the Insurer’s Information Technology (IT) team maintains a robust technology environment that includes virtualized platforms operating in its data center.

When the Insurer’s Web portal began experiencing performance issues, the IT team found it did not have visibility into internal east-west traffic in the data center’s virtualized environment necessary to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. The IT team’s existing third-party technologies did not offer necessary visibility into the virtualized environment or troubleshooting tools necessary to execute repeatable, corrective troubleshooting processes. As a result, the IT Executive team could not provide inter-organizational insight into its Web portal performance issues.

NETSCOUT Solution

The Insurer is deploying the NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform, including InfiniStreamNG 4795 appliance with Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI+) technology. The NETSCOUT solution provides the Insurer IT team with a seamless solution for assuring both physical and virtualized network functions.

NETSCOUT Delivery Service resources will provide the Insurer IT team with recommended practices for on-site deployment of nGeniusONE and InfiniStreamNG technology.

NETSCOUT Solution in Action

The nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform provides a vendor-agnostic approach to managing network, application, and server performance in the Insurer’s data center. In doing so, the NETSCOUT solution delivers deep-level visibility into all application flows and user sessions, including Web, multimedia, and peer-to-peer applications from the network.

In supporting those abilities, the InfiniStreamNG platform presents realtime views of both the user and control planes with end-to-end visibility across the Insurer’s physical and virtual network environments. The InfiniStreamNG 4795 platform uses NETSCOUT’s ASI Plus technology to passively and non-intrusively capture traffic to provide rich, detailed operational insights into the Insurer’s live production environment. The information is used by nGeniusONE platform to provide critical context to the Insurer’s IT performance issues, enabling the organization’s Network Engineering, Security, and Database systems teams to work collaboratively to troubleshoot anomalous issues.

Business Value

Of primary value, the NETSCOUT solution is helping the IT staff at the Insurer to provide a high-quality user experience to those coming to their portal. Beyond internal organizational concerns, any Web portal performance issue could result in reduced availability to injured workers needing care, their employers, and other parties required to deliver Workers Compensation case management. Sustained Web portal anomalies could also adversely impact the public image of this high-profile, State-affiliated Insurer. The NETSCOUT solution addresses these primary business concerns, providing visibility into data center network and virtual environment performance, Web portal availability, and other service issues.

nGeniusONE’s intuitive troubleshooting tools make it easier for the Insurer’s IT organization to manage their virtual environment and third-party platforms.

From an operational perspective, the NETSCOUT solution helps the Insurer’s Network team to better report IT environment status to Business Operations leadership.