Verizon Business has introduced its new Application Assurance service, which is powered by Fluke Networks’ Visual Performance Manage.

This offering is the latest addition to the Verizon Private IP Application Aware (News - Alert) suite of tools, which are designed to help businesses and government agencies identify and troubleshoot threats that could hamper application performance.

With the new software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert))-based offering, customers can monitor both application and network traffic. In a release, company officials said the service provides an enterprise-wide view of how applications such as e-commerce Web sites, voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are performing.

“Our new Application Assurance service tracks performance throughout the extended enterprise and identifies potential vulnerabilities to help IT managers regain control, safeguard assets, and keep video, voice and data traffic flowing smoothly,” said Blair Crump, group president of worldwide sales with Verizon Business (News - Alert), in the release.

The new Application Assurance solution eliminates the need for companies to purchase or maintain network-management software and hardware since the new cloud-based capability is offered to Private IP customers via a SaaS model, said company officials.

Application Assurance provides a combination of passive network monitoring and active monitoring. Passive network monitoring allows real-time tracking of who is using an application, for what purpose, when and where, while active monitoring employs customized software agents to generate synthetic network traffic for measuring network availability and performance.

“Verizon recognized its customer’s critical need for application performance and network usage visibility across the transport and approached Fluke Networks (News - Alert) for an industry-unique combination of product capabilities and a SaaS delivery model,” said Scott Allen, vice president of marketing for the systems business at Fluke Networks.

CSX Corp. tested the product earlier this year as part of the company’s annual disaster recovery exercise. Frank Lonegro of CSX said that Verizon Business' Application Assurance helped the company identify a potential bottleneck on the mobile VSAT disaster recovery network.

“Once the issue was resolved, we were able to successfully complete 64 concurrent VoIP calls between our mobile VSAT network and our servers located several states away,” Lonegro said in the release.

Application Assurance service is expected to be available in December to Verizon Private IP customers around the world.