Move to the Cloud with Confidence

Kentik provides the network visibility teams need to plan migrations confidently — understanding what’s running where, how applications depend on each other, what traffic patterns look like under normal conditions, and what capacity will be needed in the target environment. The platform ingests flow data from on-premises infrastructure (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX, VPC flow logs) and combines it with synthetic monitoring and BGP routing context to establish a complete picture of the current state. Teams use this data to identify dependencies, baseline performance, forecast cloud capacity needs, and avoid surprises during cutover.

Effective migration baselining requires capturing normal traffic patterns over a representative time period — typically 30 to 90 days — at multiple layers: per-application, per-service, per-user, and per-network-path. Kentik supports this by ingesting flow data from on-premises infrastructure, cloud environments, and edge devices, then enriching each record with application, business unit, geographic, and routing context at ingest. Teams can establish baselines for traffic volume, latency, packet loss, and protocol mix, then alert on deviations during and after migration to catch regressions before they affect users.

Network-based dependency mapping uses observed traffic flows to identify which services, databases, APIs, and external dependencies each application actually communicates with — including dependencies that aren’t documented or that the application owner may not know about. Kentik analyzes flow records to surface these dependencies based on traffic patterns rather than instrumentation, capturing third-party SaaS calls, cross-data-center connections, and shadow dependencies. This is especially valuable for migration planning because it reveals dependencies that would otherwise only surface as broken connections after cutover.

Kentik provides first-class flow log ingestion for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — including VPC flow logs (AWS, GCP), VNet flow logs (Azure), VCN flow logs (OCI), and the associated cloud metadata and metrics from each provider. For Kubernetes environments (EKS, AKS, GKE, OKE), Kentik also supports the eBPF-based Kentik Kappa agent for pod-level visibility. Traffic to and from other clouds — including IBM Cloud and smaller providers — is visible through synthetic monitoring from globally distributed agents, on-premises NetFlow from edge devices, and BGP routing analysis. The combination lets teams track migration traffic regardless of which clouds are involved.

Migration-time troubleshooting requires the ability to compare pre-migration baselines with current behavior, isolate whether issues are application-side or network-side, and trace traffic across the boundary between on-premises and cloud environments. Kentik supports this by ingesting flow data from both sides of the migration in a single platform, correlating with synthetic tests that measure path performance, and applying Kentik AI Advisor to surface evidence-backed root cause when something changes. Teams use this to detect routing inefficiencies, identify slow inter-cloud paths, and pinpoint capacity bottlenecks during cutover windows.

Multicloud topology visualization requires real-time discovery of cloud resources (VPCs, VNets, subnets, gateways) across each provider, combined with traffic flow context that shows how those resources actually communicate. Kentik provides this through the Kentik Map, which automatically renders topology across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OCI, and on-premises environments — updating as resources change. Teams can drill from a high-level topology view into specific flow details, security group or NSG rule analysis, and performance metrics without switching between cloud-specific tools.

Multicloud root-cause analysis requires the ability to trace traffic across cloud boundaries, correlate cloud network paths with application behavior, and isolate whether the issue is inside one cloud, between clouds, or in the internet path between them. Kentik supports this by unifying flow analytics across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI alongside internet path data and BGP intelligence — and by running Kentik AI Advisor across all of it to produce evidence-backed RCA summaries quickly. This is especially valuable during and after migrations, when application teams may not yet know which environment owns a given service.

Right-sizing requires actual traffic data — peak utilization, growth patterns, traffic source and destination breakdowns, and inter-region or inter-zone flow attribution — rather than worst-case theoretical estimates. Kentik analyzes post-migration flow data to surface actual capacity utilization across cloud connections (Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, Cloud Interconnect, FastConnect), inter-region links, and gateway throughput, then attributes that capacity to specific applications and business units. Teams use this data to negotiate cloud provider commitments with evidence, eliminate over-provisioned resources, and forecast capacity needs as the environment scales.