Helping your customers keep their networks fresh with Netformx Discovery

Hello Cisco Partners,

Most enterprise technology designs begin with an existing “brownfield” or new “greenfield” environment, but customer records may not reflect the latest network configuration. This makes it difficult to plan network migrations or identify opportunities for “technology refresh” as equipment nears obsolescence, or end-of-support/life.

Providing a better customer experience and upselling along the way

Your customer has a lot of equipment in their network that at some point will be going EoX. In all cases for one reason or another it will eventually need to be replaced. Some of it you may have sold to the customer, some of it may have been sold by someone else. But if you regularly assess your customers network for EoX instances you can; 1. alert your customer well in advance, 2. give them time to plan, and 3. give yourself time to create a proposal— for a replacement sale for something you may or may not have sold the first time.

Additionally, regular assessments provide you information on PSIRT’s or Cisco security alerts on potential network vulnerabilities.

Netformx Discovery enables you to do all those things by providing a comprehensive audit, accurate baseline inventory, and analysis of a customer’s multivendor network.

Understanding Discovery basic use cases

With Discovery, users quickly gain insights on equipment that is underpowered or underutilized, end-of-life or out-of-service, a potential security vulnerability, or otherwise in conflict with a customer’s new requirements.

Here are typical ways companies are using Discovery today.

• The Discovery application can be installed at a customer site or users can assess a network onsite. With Discovery you can run network scans as needed and upload the file to map the customer network and identify what is nearing or has gone EoX.
• With a Netformx DesignXpert® license you can automatically upload scan results into DesignXpert to seamlessly generate full reports and network topology maps.
• To avoid traveling to the site for an assessment, Netformx Discovery can run in a Dockers Container (a common app in IT deployments) at the customer site to scan as scheduled or as needed. This Discovery file can be imported to DesignXpert for full output capabilities.

Doing more with your Discovery data

Netformx Discovery provides essential information that can be leveraged by other Netformx products, forming a reliable basis for further insights and actions. For example,

• Discovery’s accurate customer baseline network information becomes the basis for Netformx DesignXpert solution designs.
• When fed into Netformx ChannelXpert™, the Refresh 2 Accelerate (R2A) dashboard provides users a comprehensive summary of client assets, assets confirmed in use, replacement opportunities, and converted sales revenue.

  

• Discovery results are available to Netformx AssetXpert™ so users have accurate status information on their customers’ network assets for renewal discussions and upsell opportunity identification.

The minute a network diagram is completed and printed it begins immediately to become outdated. We recommend using Discovery with a regular cadence throughout the customer lifecycle to ensure plans and actions are based on up-to-date network configurations. Armed with the most current information, you will provide better customer experience by making them aware of and supporting their business needs based on the latest configuration data.

If you would like to learn more about how to better leverage your Discovery licenses, whether standalone or included with DesignXpert, contact me at mike.johnson@netformx.com or sales@netformx.com.