TelecomNewsroom interview with Stefano Gridelli, CEO, NetBeez

By Contributing Editor Anne Whealdon 

Stefano Gridelli is CEO of NetBeez, a distributed network monitoring platform that provides real-time visibility into performance across wired, WiFi and cloud networks. Gridelli co-founded NetBeez with the goal of helping distributed organizations maximize the value of their network infrastructure, reduce network downtime and allow IT to quickly detect, troubleshoot and repair network issues. By delivering heightened visibility and continuous proactive testing, NetBeez empowers its clients to successfully speed up troubleshooting and reduce end-user downtime.

Prior to NetBeez, Stefano served as a Network Engineer for one of the largest healthcare organizations in the United States. As a lead engineer on multi-million dollar projects, Stefano designed and successfully installed computer networks for medium and large-sized hospitals. Before moving to the United States, Stefano worked for a software security startup that developed a zero-trust email system, which was awarded a grant from the European Community.

With ONUG Fall 2019 around the corner, we caught up with Stefano to chat about the company, the drivers he sees in the telecom and tech industry and challenges in the enterprise market.  

TelecomNewsroom, Anne Whealdon (TNR-AW) Question: Tell us about what you do and what problems NetBeez is solving. 

NetBeez, Stefano Gridelli (NB-SG) Answer: NetBeez is a distributed network monitoring platform that provides real-time visibility for all wired, WiFi and cloud networks. The solution relies on continuous and proactive end-to-end testing to detect network issues that cause downtime and service degradation, reducing the time it takes to repair network incidents. This approach catches network issues as soon as they occur, sometimes even before they happen, thanks to trend analysis. NetBeez makes IT more efficient, helps networks perform faster, and empowers businesses to save millions in unneeded network downtime.

TNR-AW Q: What is the one thing that differentiates NetBeez within the industry?

NB-SG A: NetBeez is one of the first companies to monitor the network from the user perspective. This is a different approach than the traditional SNMP-based network monitoring tools that simply check the status of network devices. The real-time data collected by the remote network monitoring sensors enables IT to be proactive on remote network issues before they have a dramatic impact on business operations. NetBeez is also one of the few monitoring solutions in the market that can provide real-time and remote monitoring for large scale and distributed networks.

TNR-AW Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the enterprise market today?

NB-SG A: Network architecture is growing in complexity, and application delivery is becoming more time-sensitive, demanding highly reliable, scalable network monitoring tools. Network Engineering teams lack visibility into the end-user experience at remote sites and oftentimes have to send IT to troubleshoot the problem, costing companies millions of dollars in prolonged and unnecessary downtime. Network engineers keep receiving notifications that something is ‘broken,’ and they hear customers complain but they don’t have any visibility into what the actual problem is. The traditional model of a central NOC and many remote ‘offices’ or locations without adequate tools mean they still have to send IT out to each location to find out what the problem is.

TNR-AW Q: What is NetBeez’s position on hybrid multi-cloud deployments for the enterprise? 

NB-SG A: NetBeez enables enterprises to monitor hybrid multi-cloud deployments with a scalable and simple-to-use platform that can support on-premise, cloud or hybrid environments. NetBeez users can choose different agent deployment options: small wired and WiFi sensors for corporate locations and remote sites; software agents and containers installed on existing equipment, including network routers and switches (e.g. Cisco, Extreme, Juniper, …); cloud and virtual agents for private and public clouds. No matter how large and complex the network is, the NetBeez platform offers real-time visibility and service assurance of hybrid multi-cloud deployments.

TNR-AW Q: What is the one thing that enterprise companies need to be aware of as they embrace hybrid multi-cloud computing? 

NB-SG A: Simply put, enterprise companies that are embracing hybrid multi-cloud computing should invest in Hybrid Multi-Cloud Observability tools. In cloud environments, enterprises don’t own, operate or control the underlying infrastructure. For this reason, legacy network monitoring tools based on SNMP and flow-based protocols provide limited information. To quickly detect and identify network performance issues, it’s necessary to rely on distributed and active network monitoring. By running continuously active and end-to-end tests, it’s possible to quickly detect and isolate network performance issues in hybrid multi-cloud environments. This is especially important when even a few minutes of network downtime can cost a company millions of dollars.

TNR-AW Q: What products or services are you most excited to share with the enterprise community at the ONUG Fall event? 

NB-SG A: This will be the first time that NetBeez participates in an ONUG event. During the fall event, we’ll showcase our distributed network monitoring platform to the ONUG audience. We will use the 10-minute proof of concept to first review the benefits of implementing distributed network monitoring to support a multi-cloud hybrid environment. In the second part of the proof of concept, we’ll show how large and distributed organizations can get real-time data from NetBeez agents to detect conditions such as packet loss and increased round-trip time, which affect the performance of applications and cloud services.

TNR-AW Q: What is the most important driver of change taking shape today?

NB-SG A: We live in a fast-paced world with infinite options. Customer and end-user behavior is changing. Due to the overload of information, the variety of options, and the (typically) immediate results, end-users have very limited patience and time. If something doesn’t work, or is slow, they give up and move to the next item. Having a fast and reliable network is a requirement for today’s businesses to compete in today’s world.

TNR-AW Q: What are you looking to gain from participating in the ONUG Fall Conference?

NB-SG A: We are looking forward to connecting with end-users that are interested in implementing hybrid multi-cloud solutions as well as other vendors and solution integrators. We are also closely watching the progress of the Hybrid Multi-Cloud Observability working group, seeing as how it is a use case that is very close to NetBeez’s mission.

TNR-AW Q: Thanks for these great insights, Stefano. To learn more about NetBeez, please visit www.netbeez.net.