Juniper Networks’ Mist Systems business unit has announced a new service called Premium Analytics. This service analyzes and reports on up to a year’s worth of data collected by Mist’s wireless APs, wired Juniper switches, and third-party networking equipment.
Premium Analytics is designed for two constituencies: network engineers that want to monitor and measure network performance; and lines of business that wants information on user movement in retail stores, warehouses, and other physical environments.
Premium Analytics is an add-on to Mist’s Wi-Fi Assurance and Wired Assurance services, which analyze and report on 30 days of wireless or wired data, and provide automated troubleshooting and remediation. Premium Analytics extends data storage and reporting for up to one year. You’ll need at least of Assurance services to get Premium Analytics.
The Engineer View
For network engineers and IT ops teams, Mist says Premium Analytics can correlate network performance data from third-party systems, such as SD-WAN appliances, with data already being collected from Mist APs and telemetry from Juniper switches.
Network and ops teams can track and report on WAN performance, monitor network usage to anticipate when and where to provision more bandwidth or address client density, and get visibility across campus, branch, and remote locations.
Note that for Premium Analytics to ingest third-party network and performance data, that data has to be streamed from the third-party devices to a separate cloud storage service (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Premium Analytics will then make API calls to the cloud storage service to fetch the data.
Gold On The Ceiling
Premium Analytics analyzes and reports on location data for companies that want to measure the movement of customers, employees, and goods through a physical environment such as a store or warehouse.
Mist APs automatically use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals to track how client devices move around a physical space. This data can be used to create heat maps to show where customers cluster or spend time, to measure client movement through a store, monitor changing traffic patterns, and other location analytics.
Premium Analytics Sample Dashboard – Source: Juniper Networks
If organizations provide mobile apps or portals for customers to sign into, Premium Analytics can incorporate and report on individual user behavior. Such information could be useful for rewards programs, discounts, special offers, and so on.
Organizations can deploy Bluetooth beacons or asset tags from Mist partners to get greater location detail or to track specific items. Premium Analytics can report on the movement of specific assets, such as how a pallet travels across a warehouse, a manufactured item passes through a process, or medical equipment moves through a hospital.
Mist Premium Analytics will be available in April from Juniper VARs and MSPs.
