Cloud-based platforms, the “work from anywhere” culture, and other trends are upending traditional network monitoring. This is because some or all of the infrastructure is no longer owned by the IT organization, instead, relying on home network infrastructure, the Internet, and SaaS/public cloud networks.
A study by Dimensional Research reveals that current monitoring solutions are inadequate when it comes to supporting this growing scale and complexity as well as new technologies, devices, and network architectures. Some 97% of network and operations professionals report network challenges, for example, with the primary consequence being the impact on employee productivity (reported by 52%), followed by executives being brought into the loop because network issues are impacting the business (39%).
Network delivery of the user experience does not exist within the four walls of the data center anymore. With more employees working remotely and more workloads running on cloud platforms, it is harder to gain visibility into the end-to-end user experience. Network monitoring must reach services beyond the edge of the corporate infrastructure; it must utilize user-experience metrics through standard operating procedures and workflows to not only ensure reliable network delivery but an exceptional customer experience.
This large contact center outsourcer, for example, at one time managed 14 sites. Owing to the pandemic and call center agents working from home, that number has risen to 8,000 sites – and every connection is different. The challenge for the outsourcer is to keep operations running smoothly and to maintain the same quality as when call center services were centralized.
How network professionals can reimagine the digital experience
Network teams need a modern, innovative approach to managing digital experience in this new, complex ecosystem. Teams that transition will align themselves better with core business metrics and provide more value to their organization. Those that don’t will quickly be marginalized, becoming yet another IT organization where the CEO says, “they just don’t get it.”
Understanding the digital experience can be a moving target in a highly decentralized and hybrid enterprise world. As a result, network teams can’t choose between network performance monitoring and digital experience monitoring. They really need both. To solve this dilemma, IT leaders must rethink their network operations and evolve traditional NetOps strategies into modern Experience-Driven NetOps.
With Experience-Driven NetOps, organizations benefit from unified network visibility of digital services running on traditional and modern software-defined network architectures. This single pane of glass insight enables network professionals to understand, manage and optimize the performance of every digital service – through their standard troubleshooting procedures – from the core network to the edge, to the end-user.
Now is the time for action. To stay in front of change, organizations need to deliver experience-proven connections and ensure network operations teams are experience-driven. This modern monitoring approach is closely aligned with key business outcomes, improving customer experience and making the IT organization a better partner driving accelerated digital transformation.
You can learn more about how to tackle the challenges of modern network monitoring in this eBook, 4 Imperatives for Monitoring Modern Networks. Read now and discover how organizations can plan their monitoring strategy for the next-generation network technologies.
