Flowmon-GÉANT Story: Monitoring Network with 50 Million Users

Big things in life have quite beginnings sometimes. More than ten years ago, a small group of Czech scientists worked for the pan-European association GÉANT. They had no idea that this project would change their lives forever and give a rise to the Flowmon solution which would one day monitor and secure pan-European network which is used by 50 million users.

Monitor large computer networks. Detect failures and security threats. Secure sensitive data. These are some of Flowmon objectives on which rely financial institutions, internet service providers, governments as well as by small and mid-size businesses globally. The genesis of Flowmon is related to relatively inconspicuous project for GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). “Ten years ago GÉANT built a high-speed internet network which was meant to serve European universities and research institutions,” recalls Jiri Tobola, who is now responsible for the global sales of Flowmon solution. “The goal of our team was to develop a solution which could handle monitoring of such infrastructure. I had no idea that this project would be the beginning of Flowmon and will affect the entire security area,” adds Tobola.

The results of the project had been so impressive, that consultative committee advised the team to establish a company. “We were researchers with no extra funding and no experiences in business world. We had a vision that our top-class technology could help to manage computer networks with their growing complexity and be on the forefront of fight against modern cyber threats,” says Tobola. “In a short time we acquired first Flowmon customers and leading information technology companies became interested in our solution.” It was the beginning of fruitful partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, Check Point, VMware or InterSystems which drives the company’s passion in bringing new solutions to the market.

Company which started in a group of three as a start-up in the Czech Republic has now customers all around the world and their solution is appreciated as the standard for the network monitoring and security area.

After the years of development, Flowmon and GÉANT paths crossed again when GÉANT was looking for a solution that could handle large network backbone monitoring with massive throughputs and volumes of processed data for their project NSHaRP which has an aim to provide incident handling and response services on network issues. Flowmon triumph over all competitors was a subject of technology advantage. Today it collects and analyses data from vast range of active devices handling over 1000 TB of data across Europe every day via the GÉANT IP backbone.

Big things in life have quite beginnings sometimes. Starting as a small project intended to find a monitoring solution for a local networks, Flowmon has grew up into a complex solution that helps to keep even the largest computer networks manageable and secure.