Ampito partners with Highlight on service observability

Ampito has partnered with Highlight to add Highlight's monitoring and service observability platform to its internal operations and customer deployments. Under the agreement, all connectivity services sold and deployed by Ampito will include Highlight.

The move gives Ampito a single view of network and service performance across its own teams and customer estates, covering more than 5,000 customer connections. More than 50 employees across engineering, service delivery, operations, sales, account management and the service desk will use the platform.

The partnership reflects a wider issue for managed service providers and large organisations, which often use separate tools to monitor SD-WAN, Wi-Fi, networking and other parts of their infrastructure. That can make it harder to identify the source of a fault, assess its effect on users and decide what response is needed.

Highlight's software is designed to present data from different parts of a customer environment in a single interface. This will allow both technical and non-technical users to see how infrastructure issues are affecting the wider digital environment.

Inside Ampito, network and technical teams will use the system as an operational overview, while the service desk will access relevant data when handling calls, triaging incidents and escalating issues. That should help staff explain problems to customers and respond more quickly.

Customer-facing teams are also expected to use the platform in account discussions. The data could help Ampito identify broader issues in a customer's environment rather than focus only on individual connectivity services.

Customer use

Ampito pointed to an existing customer need around SD-WAN observability as one reason for the tie-up. The arrangement also replaces its use of multiple monitoring products with a more consistent layer across internal teams, partners and customers.

"I've known about Highlight for many years and when one of our customers was experiencing challenges with observability across their SD-WAN environment, we knew where to turn," said Andrew Melling, Senior Account Director, Ampito.

"Ampito has historically used multiple monitoring platforms, and Highlight now gives us a consistent observability layer for our internal teams, our partners and, most importantly, our customers.

"Highlight's multi-tenant, role-based visibility ensures that different teams within Ampito can access the information that is most relevant to their roles. More than 50 Ampito employees across engineering, service delivery, operations, sales, account management and the service desk will use the platform.

"Most importantly, for our customers, Highlight is not a land-and-leave deployment; it's a land-and-expand model. We can use the insights we gain to identify further opportunities to improve the customer's environment and deliver even greater value."

Ampito operates across more than 85 countries and provides infrastructure, connectivity and managed services for customers in EMEA, APAC and the Americas. The group says its operations include support for more than 5,000 managed SD-WAN sites and more than 10,000 monitored nodes through round-the-clock network and security operations centres.

Highlight is based in the UK and focuses on network and service observability for managed service providers, carriers and enterprise IT teams. Its platform is designed to combine data from network, cloud and workplace systems into a service-level view for providers and end customers.

Broader role

Melling also said Highlight had worked with Ampito on customer discussions as well as technical integration, suggesting the partnership extends beyond software deployment into joint work on how service data is presented and used.

"The Highlight teams have been incredibly supportive," said Melling.

"They have worked with us in customer conversations, as well as working closely with our technical teams to build and integrate the platform. That combination of technical expertise and commercial support has been invaluable as we have embedded service observability as a key part of our offering."

Highlight said the breadth of Ampito's internal adoption was notable because it puts observability tools in front of operational and customer-facing teams rather than limiting access to engineers. That gives service desk, sales and account staff access to the same underlying view of service performance.

"Ampito has built its reputation on delivering outstanding customer outcomes through deep technical expertise and a strong managed services culture," said Martin Saunders, Chief Executive Officer, Highlight.

"We're delighted to help make service observability a core part of that proposition.

"With more than 50 Ampito employees using Highlight across engineering, operations, service delivery, sales and customer-facing teams, observability is embedded throughout the organisation, helping customers gain clearer visibility, faster resolution and a better understanding of service performance."