NetMotion Seamlessly Connects Global Workforces With Operational Intelligence

Executive Summary

The mobile workforce is expanding exponentially as sophisticated and affordable technologies connect employees and employers across the globe. With that expansion comes the need for intelligent software solutions to anticipate downtime, mitigate security threats and resolve issues quickly.

Using the versatility of Splunk Enterprise, NetMotion Software has developed a powerful way to respond to its customers’ needs for data visualization and reporting analytics for mobile networks and devices used outside the corporate firewall.

Through a collaborative OEM Embedded Licensing partnership with Splunk, NetMotion:

• Responds to customers even faster
• Supplies a scalable reporting analytics product
• Provides intuitive dashboards using real-time data
• Produces granular troubleshooting and diagnostics analytics
• Offers deep insight into mobile workforce behaviors
• Designs solutions to meet the data and resiliency requirements of tomorrow

The mobile workforce goes beyond working from home. From airport mechanics to police officers to utility workers, employees are getting work orders and completing tasks on mobile devices throughout our communities and beyond. To do this effectively, enhanced connectivity and a secure connection are a prerequisite.

Jobs that take workers in and out of various locations, causing them to lose connectivity or requiring them to log back in multiple times in a day, quickly lead to productivity losses. “It becomes a huge issue, because these workers are spending so much time just trying to get connected and stay connected on their devices,” says John Hillock, Senior Product Manager at NetMotion.

This dependence on mobile networks demands increased visibility. The ability to gather data from mobile devices on the ground or in the field could mean the difference between a regular productive day or lost business opportunities due to connectivity issues. IT teams that manage enterprise mobility need to better understand the impact of performance, data costs, connectivity and security threats to serve their remote workers.

Since 2001, NetMotion, now a team of roughly 160 people with offices in Seattle and around the world, has delivered trusted software solutions that assist mobile workforces to operate smoothly and productively. NetMotion is known for helping clients maintain reliable connections, providing resilience across networks and shedding light on mobile diagnostics data. Nearly two years ago, NetMotion took its efforts a step further with a reporting analytics tool that Hillock says is tailored to pull data from NetMotion into a single reporting interface.

“That’s where we landed on Splunk … and that was our OEM of Splunk Enterprise built into Mobile IQ on the NetMotion platform,” Hillock says.

NetMotion now enhances visibility on networks, applications and devices through customizable dashboards. Hillock, who points to an airplane mechanic as a use case, says such information can help IT teams support these workers, gain insight into connectivity patterns and troubleshoot as needed.

NetMotion is transforming their platform into a one-stop portal for reporting and analytics. “Everything is going to be done within Mobile IQ on the NetMotion platform and in our Splunk interface,” Hillock says. “One look and feel for all customers.”

Focus on Core Competencies

Partnering with Splunk to deploy a single, visually rich reporting interface has allowed NetMotion to focus on managing and optimizing mobility.

“For us, it’s being able to free up development resources so that we’re working on our core product and what we do best,” Hillock says. “Let’s focus on what we’re really good at, namely the mobile network optimization and security pieces, instead of spending our days working on reporting interfaces.”

Splunk’s ability to integrate data from NetMotion into meaningful information has helped the company become even more responsive to customers. NetMotion’s platform tackles mobility analytics and visibility, providing real-time monitoring across areas including mobile networks, location, performance of devices and applications, usage and behavior.

“We’re able to meet those customer needs without having them go off and find some other way to solve their problem. We want to solve it for them,” Hillock says.

Scaling for the Future

That responsiveness extends to NetMotion’s partnership with Splunk. Having access to technology roadmaps affords the partners an opportunity to continually discuss future development efforts.

“It’s been beneficial to us to have that constant open channel, whether it’s a fire drill because we found a major bug we need to resolve, helping with the process of localizing our reporting interface for Japanese customers, or taking guidance on scalability for our large enterprise customers,” Hillock says.

Now, instead of selling its products piecemeal, NetMotion is shifting toward a platform approach, with built-in reporting analytics that will expand its capabilities. As the appetite for mobile data analytics continues to grow, Splunk helps NetMotion scale to meet demand.

“We consume all that data and still have a product that can scale to a point where we have dashboards display without having to wait for hours,” Hillock says. “We could probably figure that out on our own, but it would require a heavy development resource investment. We know that Splunk already has a market-leading solution we can rely on.”