Build vs. Buy: 3 Reasons Why Packet Analysis is Better Bought Than Built

In the competitive landscape of cloud-managed network solutions, integrating advanced features like packet analysis significantly enhances your product's value. When it comes to developing an advanced feature like this, the decision between building in-house and purchasing a pre-built solution boils down to one major factor: opportunity cost. With the expertise required to add packet analysis, spending resources by building in-house means that you aren’t spending those resources on the features your team was built for.

Here’s why buying a complete packet analysis solution as a strategic upgrade to your product is the smarter choice.

1. Adding packet analysis requires a deep understanding of network protocols and tools

Building a packet analysis feature from scratch requires extensive knowledge of network protocols and tools like Wireshark. This is not a trivial task; it involves understanding the intricacies of various protocols, packet structures, and the specific needs of different network environments.

The Difficulty of Building In-House:

• Expertise Gap: Without a team of experts in network protocols, your development efforts can lead to inefficient and inaccurate implementations.
• Learning Curve: Even if your team is skilled, the time required to develop and perfect the necessary expertise can delay your project significantly.

2. Including packet analysis in your solution is a data security problem (and solution!)

Packet captures (pcaps) contain highly sensitive data, including potentially all information traversing your network. Ensuring the security of this data is paramount, requiring robust encryption, secure storage, and strict access controls.

The Difficulty of Building In-House:

• High stakes: Developing a secure system for handling sensitive data is complex and fraught with risks. A single vulnerability can lead to significant breaches.
• Regulatory compliance: Ensuring compliance with standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and others adds an additional layer of complexity and responsibility.

3. Good packet analysis requires good data visualization practices

Interpreting raw packet data is a challenge, even for seasoned professionals. Effective packet analysis requires sophisticated data visualization tools to help users quickly and accurately understand the data.

The Difficulty of Building In-House:

• Complex visualizations: Creating intuitive and effective visualizations demands a deep understanding of both the data and the principles of good design.
• User experience: It is a significant undertaking to ensure that these visualizations are user-friendly and accessible to both novices and experts.

The advantages of buying a pre-built solution like Packet Viewer

Given these challenges, purchasing a pre-built packet analysis solution offers numerous advantages:

• Expertise on tap: Packet Viewer is developed by experts who have spent years mastering the complexities of packet analysis. This expertise is embedded in the product, ensuring accuracy and reliability.
• Secure design: Packet Viewer was built with the data security issues of pcaps in mind, mitigating the risks associated with handling sensitive data.
• Visualization tailored for packet captures: Packet Viewer provides sophisticated data visualization capabilities and customizations out of the box, making it easier to tailor the end-user’s view to their specific needs, allowing them to interpret the complex data in pcaps and gain actionable insights.
• Low maintenance cost: Packet Viewer stays ahead of updates to the latest packet capture decoding capabilities and efficiencies, removing the cost of keeping your team continually up-to-date on knowledge and resources.
• Sticking to your roadmap with minimal effort: Packet Viewer can be added to your solution with minimal development time, letting you spend your developer’s time and resources on the features that are the main focus of your product. Even with finite development resources, you won’t delay core features to build something that already exists.

Packet Viewer is a strategic addition to your products, ready to go

While building a packet analysis feature in-house might seem appealing for the control and customization it offers, the reality is that it often leads to significant challenges and hidden costs. The deep expertise required, the complexities of ensuring data security, the need for effective data visualization, and the challenges of processing large datasets make this a daunting task.

Purchasing a complete packet analysis solution like Packet Viewer provides a robust, secure, and user-friendly alternative that enhances your product’s capabilities without the associated risks and resource drain. By choosing to buy rather than build, you can leverage the expertise of industry leaders, ensure compliance with security standards, and provide your users with powerful tools that drive efficiency and insight. This strategic decision allows you to focus on your core competencies while delivering superior value to your customers.