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Developers are hired for their coding skills, but often spend too much time on information-finding, setup tasks, and manual processes. To combat wasted time and effort, Discover® Financial Services championed a few initiatives to help developers get back to what they do best: developing. The result? More than 100,000 hours of developer toil have been automated or eliminated.

“A happy developer is one who’s writing code,” said Joe Mills, Director of Transformation Strategy and Automation at Discover. “So, we strive to create an inspiring culture and an exciting place to build your career. We want it to be easy to deliver value with the skillsets you have and to harness opportunities to refine your craft.”

Streamlining development through tools, knowledge, community

DevWorx is a program that simplifies the developer experience, streamlines work, and frees up time to innovate. Specifically, DevWorx is an online hub where developers across Discover can access prescriptive guidance for repetitive setup or deployment tasks, developer environments, self-service or automation tools, and a community of other developers to collaborate with.

“It’s basically a developer-driven community where we remove barriers to getting work done, focus on efficiency, and really enjoy coding as opposed to it feeling like a slog,” said Jonathan Stoyko, senior manager of strategic projects.

Developers can use DevWorx to standardize duplicate processes and reduce manual tasks. “If there’s a code structure that has to be reused every time you’re creating an application, that structure can be standardized as a template,” said Stoyko. “And we can store it in a common location so everybody has access to it and can contribute to it.”

Increasing productivity with step-by-step tutorials

Golden Paths are a key element of DevWorx. Golden Paths provide step-by-step tutorials for accomplishing specific development tasks within Discover. From making submissions, gathering approvals, and filling out prerequisite forms, Golden Paths covers the entire production lifecycle.

“If someone gets dropped into a new team, they can start coding within minutes and skip months of playing catchup,” said Andrew Duckett, senior principal application engineer and architect. “With Golden Paths, these processes are all codified and readily accessible.”

Developers are encouraged to contribute to existing paths and build new ones based on their own experiences.

Duckett continues: “We believe that it’s better to let the engineering community determine what works best for them, not to put a bunch of people in an ivory tower and dictate what is right. These developers are hired to innovate and solve problems, so we let them do that.”

Reducing manual tasks through automation

Automating manual tasks and repetitive processes is crucial for increasing developer efficiency. “Employing automation for tasks that many engineers face throughout their SDLC helps to shift focus towards human value-add activities. This also increases overall delivery throughput, with higher confidence in our development lifecycle, and produces consistent processes across teams that would otherwise be handled one-off and uniquely” said Joe Mills.

Developers can engage a team of automation experts to assess certain processes and tasks and help uncover automation opportunities. The team uses a hub-and-spoke model to scale their efforts across development teams at Discover and can help teams with robotic process automation, business automation, or code automation.

Reducing friction through consistent development practices

In addition to these initiatives, engineers at Discover adhere to a set of practices, internally called CraftWorx, that define and direct the agile development process. Aligning engineers across these practices reduces friction because engineers and developers are following the same development practices.

“If you’re trying to solve a problem and you think, ‘where’s the answer?’ CraftWorx aims to be that answer,” said Colin Petford, director of technology capability enablement at Discover. “It’s also constantly evolving along with our craft. It will never be finished because technology doesn’t sit still.”

Learn how Discover developers are using automation, Golden Paths, CraftWorx, and more.

Digital Transformation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The effects of such an unpredictable environment are profound, and no organization in any industry is immune. Looking across our client base, we expect to see varying degrees of impact as the turbulence continues. The common thread? In almost every case, there’s an increased need for data insight and technology-enabled agility to reaffirm technology’s position at the center of investment strategy in order to achieve organizational growth.

So when it comes to securing funding and resources from the board, is the CIO put in the box seat if technology is at the center of investment strategy? Not necessarily. While investing in technology is key—and becoming more so—this doesn’t mean that CIO budgets won’t come under pressure, both for capital spend as well as for operations and maintenance (O&M). That’s why forward-thinking CIOs are taking action today to strengthen their position. And no matter the industry, we believe there are four smart moves that any CIO can make now to help them weather any economic storm.

1. Optimize cloud spend

It’s a good time for CIOs to conduct a financial health check on their technology budget. This includes running a benchmarking spend analysis on all categories relative to industry peers, as well as leading technology companies. Then, identify opportunities to reduce run costs and free up funds to invest in transformation and new technology capabilities. Specifically, look at your organization’s newer areas of technology spend, especially since the last economic downturn. What’s the biggest change you’ll find? Almost invariably, spending on cloud has leapt from low or even non-existent to high. However, in many cases, that money could be spent more effectively; we often see clients using cloud in a capital-intensive way that mimics how they used to use datacenters. Remember, you don’t own cloud servers, you just “rent” them. So your usage and costs should be elastic, expanding and contracting with workload. That’s a core benefit of cloud.

That’s why one of the first moves to consider is optimizing your cloud spend. An easy example? Shut down the testing environment when you’re not using it. And consider different types of storage for different classes of data: highly-available and responsive storage for transactional data, and higher-latency and lower-cost for data not needed immediately. You should also scrutinize the bills from your cloud providers. These are often extremely complicated, running into millions or hundreds of millions of line items. FinOps for cloud can help track and optimize this spending while reaping major benefits on top. For instance, a robust FinOps capability can prevent spend commitment mistakes, and help you switch from a “lift-and-shift” approach founded on a datacenter mentality to a true cloud-centric model that realizes cloud’s full potential.

2. Double down on automation

If your IT budget, and maybe your business as a whole, is under pressure in the current environment, then automating more business processes is a natural step. But it’s important to implement automation for the right reasons, looking beyond the obvious cost savings to consider how it contributes to broader enterprise strategy. Of course, automating procedural, repeatable tasks via robotic process automation (RPA) not only cuts cost but frees up talent for higher-value, more strategic activities, enabling the business to do more with fewer people and address talent supply issues. The results? Higher efficiency and better outcomes. While many organizations are already implementing RPA, few are doing it at scale, and most haven’t yet fully embraced the more advanced “intelligent” automation opportunities via artificial intelligence and machine learning that can unlock true end-to-end automation. Given this, the CIO should become the driver of enterprise automation. 

3. Be open with suppliers on budget constraints

Try talking to your suppliers about the cost squeeze you’re facing, and you might be pleasantly surprised at their response. If you treat them as true partners and give them the opportunity to make suggestions for ways to save costs, they’ll probably come back with creative ideas. This reflects our own experience: we’ve worked with clients through downturns in industries like steel and utilities, and we know they expect us to offer creative ways to do things more cost-effectively. Whether it involves outsourcing, insourcing or something else, your suppliers or partners will often have great ideas.

4. Review software licenses and subscriptions

Many organizations are over-licensed and oversubscribed on software, pushing costs higher than they need to be. There are several ways to tackle this problem. One is to take steps to optimize subscription fees on expensive licenses by verifying the user base uses a software product or even separately licensed/subscribed features. Another is to identify savings opportunities from using open-source components instead of commercial software. Further, most software license agreements include annual processes to reset maintenance costs when consumption patterns change. Then of course there’s rationalization of products that are functionally redundant or can be archived/retired. While CIOs can carry out this license management themselves, a more effective approach could be to use a partner with specific expertise, who can detect in real time where an application is being used, and help recommend approaches to reduce spend.

With those four moves in mind, and in the drive to reduce costs amid ongoing uncertainty, CIOs may be tempted to cancel a project in its final stages to stop spend. But if that project involves retiring an asset or getting rid of a datacenter, companies should press on for multiple reasons. One is that by stopping, they’ll prolong technical debt into the future for a short-term benefit. Another is that once finished, maintenance costs, like on on-premise servers, will go away. So don’t stop short of the finish line and neglect to collect the savings.

Agile Development, Budgeting, CIO, Cloud Management, Data Center Management, IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , ,

To create a more efficient and streamlined enterprise, businesses often find themselves tempted to bring in brand new systems that promise major improvements over the status quo. This can be a viable strategy in some cases – and it will impress stakeholders that prefer to shake things up. But it comes at a cost. Swapping out the old for the new will require heavy doses of training to get everyone up to speed, and that’s just for starters.

There’s another option – optimize what you currently have. In other words, your current systems may not deliver the best possible experience for your users, but you can change that.

Before deciding whether to acquire entire new systems or software, businesses should take full stock of existing systems and processes. The goal: to effectively understand where efficiencies can be created by just re-tooling what you already have.

This blog will examine how enterprises can take stock of their systems, and offer best practices for IT teams with small budgets looking to re-tool. We’ll also provide examples of rejigging a system to improve performance.

The Importance of Self-Analysis

As noted earlier, the first step involves taking a full, 360-degree view of internal systems to determine hurdles and how best to overcome them. Getting a download on the overall performance and status of systems can paint the picture of where processes are bogging down, and the complex reasons behind bottlenecks that create inefficiency.

This also includes asking questions such as: Is this technology being under- or over-utilized? Is it dormant or active? Is it still commissioned? Is it scheduled to be decommissioned? How much space is it taking up? These questions will help inform next steps: how to either move on, or re-tool for improved efficiency.

After conducting a full assessment of internal systems, teams must talk to their front-line workers and business users about what’s working and what’s not. It’s important to remember that a lot of IT and business leaders aren’t familiar with the day-to-day operations, meaning they are removed from the daily snarls and issues that users face. This can create knowledge gaps where leadership thinks a system is performing fine. But the frontline end user is dealing with a whole host of issues, such as bugs or system failures. This is what makes communication so important. 

Creating a culture of communication between frontline workers and leadership is paramount, as the end users can act as a real-time insight pipeline. One way to achieve this culture is to host regular standup meetings with employees, led by people who are already experts in using the systems. This allows direct access to a subject matter expert who is well-versed in the technical details, and who can offer ideas that may not have been tested before.  

Re-tooling Underway

After the thorough analysis is complete, IT teams can get to work re-tooling their systems to work in a more efficient, streamlined manner. Any processes and systems that directly impact customers and revenue should be prioritized, as they’re often handling the most crucial datasets for a business.

After re-tooling, it’s crucial to test the current performance against the previous performance to establish benchmarks. While in development, there should always be a testing/beta phase where the old and new processes work concurrently; this ensures feedback around efficiency and what is accepted among users. Often, businesses will introduce a new system without testing it alongside an existing process. This creates a situation where there is no benchmark, and the business may run into the same challenges as they had before.

If the re-tooled process is customer-facing, then the same questions that are asked internally regarding performance should also be asked to the consumer. Feedback from customers is essential, as they could move to a competitor if they’re unhappy with the new process. 

Getting by on Small Budgets

Smaller businesses with tighter budgets are often more likely to undertake re-tooling. Larger organizations typically have more capital to spend on new software and other services, but the smaller organizations often must get work with what they have. 

One example: a customer that has decommissioned nodes and is looking to increase storage capacity. The company completed the assessment, realized their nodes are taking up physical space, and determined they need more storage. After the nodes have been decommissioned and the compute power removed, one way to re-tool and re-use that system is to employ a software-based storage solution. This way the company only pays for software licenses that run the storage solution off the decommissioned hosts.

As the current solution was constrained by space and only utilized as a short-term backup solution, the new storage solution helped store long-term backups to meet postponed backup compliance standards. This new idea also enhanced the company’s current solution by improving throughput and reducing network bandwidth for end users. Creative thinking and self-analysis like this can help companies of any size – particularly smaller ones with smaller budgets.

Taking an honest look at what you have and re-tooling systems is a surefire way for businesses to continue driving innovation without breaking the bank. As businesses push to transform their operations, the time is now to look within at your systems and find ways to drive efficiency by re-tooling.

Learn more about HPE PointNext Tech Care here.

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About Kyler Johnson

Kyler Johnson is a Master Technologist in HPE Pointnext, Global Remote Services. He has worked in technology for 10 years with a focus on innovation, automation, and consulting. Kyler strives to ensure his customers are highly satisfied for the present and future. When he is not focused on the customer, he enjoys reading, horseback riding, and gaming.

Enterprise, HPE, IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Dow is reaping the benefits of a year-long program to roll out new digital technologies to one of its largest manufacturing sites, resulting in improvements in performance, reliability, and employee experience.

It’s over five years since Dow Chemical merged with DuPont to form DowDuPont — and three since they split up again to form a new agricultural supplies company, Corteva; a specialist chemicals manufacturer, Dupont; and a supplier of commodity chemicals, Dow.

Melanie Kalmar was Dow’s CIO through all of that. “It was one of the largest spinouts ever that I’m aware of, and it was one of the most complex projects I’ve worked on,” she says.“ As we spun out as a new company, we also wanted to be a more digital Dow.

But it’s not about being digital for its own sake: “It’s about changing how people do their work to be more effective, more efficient, and to drive growth for the company by being able to focus on higher value activities,” she says.

One of the first fruits of that new approach was a program to get IT out of the office and accelerate the deployment of digital technologies across manufacturing and maintenance areas. It’s a project that has earned Dow a CIO 100 Award for IT innovation and leadership.

The goal was to improve the productivity, safety and reliability of manufacturing “assets” — Dow’s term for the vast expanses of concrete and steel and the sprawling outdoor networks of pipes and controls that characterize its production facilities.

Melanie Kalmar

“It really all starts from a drive to be the most reliable supplier in our industry,” she says. That’s a big deal for Dow’s customers after two years of lockdowns, worker shortages, extreme weather events and other supply chain disruptions.

Rather than begin with a small site as a pilot, Kalmar and colleagues went big — 7,000 acres big — choosing Dow’s largest production site in Freeport, Texas, for their first deployment.

“We wanted to show the payback of doing something like this, and if you go to a smaller site, you’re going to get a smaller payback,” she says.

On a site like Freeport, says Kalmar, most of the employees will be found in the control room, monitoring which valves are opening and closing from a dashboard. Previously, if they had to go out to perform maintenance, or do a round of physical checks, they’d walk back and forth between the assets and the control room to pick up work orders or print off documentation. Now, they access that information in a secure cloud via a safety-hardened device connected to a site-wide private 4G wireless network.

“We’ve put all that information at their fingertips now on these mobile devices,” she says. “The speed to maintain, correct or fix something out in the plant has tremendous impact on the overall reliability.” The employees are ecstatic about it as well, having what they need on site in an instant and and not having to print paper, especially if it’s raining or if it’s windy and the papers are blowing around,” Kalmar says.

IT workers who have struggled to pull Ethernet cables through ducts across an office or even a small factory will understand the appeal of wireless on a site the size of Freeport — but Kalmar says it has its own challenges: “At a manufacturing site, you don’t just go in with a backhoe and dig anywhere to put a pole up. All that planning and execution was very new for my team.”

This would have been a difficult undertaking in a lot of companies, where IT and operations technology (OT) organizations don’t work together, but that’s not the case at Dow, says Kalmar.

“One of the early things I did was partner with the VP of manufacturing,” she says. “We agreed that we could do this better for Dow if our teams work together.”

Part of Dow’s largest production site in Freeport, Texas.

Key to that collaboration, she says, was recognizing that it wasn’t about learning one another’s skills but leveraging them: collaborate, but leave certain tasks to the experts.

“We’ve gone through the whole RACI process and identified who’s responsible, who’s accountable, for all aspects of what happens with technology at our sites. We have a much stronger partnership by working through that together, and are even looking at career ladders across the two organizations.”

Such department-spanning career ladders already exist in other specialist areas at Dow, such as data science, where experts might find themselves working in IT, manufacturing, R&D or supply chain management. “You’ve just got to get in there and start breaking down those silos that have historically and traditionally existed across organizations,” she says. “If everything you do is driven by improving the customer and employee experience, those opportunities really start presenting themselves. It’s really changed the mindset for us at Dow.”

There are still boundaries, however. Manufacturing, for example, is still responsible for the control systems that run the manufacturing assets, although IT is starting to get more involved in the network those control systems run on, she says.

The IT organization also had to skill up for the project, adding cloud, networking, and security expertise.

The biggest need, though, was for change management skills. Kalmar expanded her leadership team to include someone specifically accountable for enterprise change. Their remit included identifying who to onboard first to drive adoption rather than merely offer training on the new systems. “Who has cycles in our run-the-business organization to even consume and accept this new stuff when it comes out?” Kalmar says. “We’re looking at change very differently.”

Ready to step up to 5G

For now, Dow’s private wireless network uses LTE, a 4G technology, but it will be ready for 5G when 5G is ready for it.

“Everybody’s hyped up about 5G networks, but you have to have devices and applications that work on 5G, so we’re not going to jump there yet — but we’ll be prepared to go there and make that switch. The infrastructure that we’ve put in place will be able to transition to 5G,” she says.

Using an older and slower wireless technology hasn’t hurt the project, though. According to Dow, more than 3,600 employees have been trained on the new tools, enabling them to perform in less than a minute data-related tasks that once took half an hour or more.

In deploying to a giant site such as Freeport, says Kalmar, it’s important to recognize early on that one-size-fits-all solutions don’t always work, and to spend time up-front speaking with colleagues and getting the right inputs. “Adjust your traditional program approach and be open to large-scale pilot implementations,” she says. “Learn as you go, communicate your wins, and continue to listen to your stakeholders.”

Unified Communications

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , ,

With the range and volume of responsibilities they must shoulder, every CIO aims for maximum efficiency in their work. After all, efficient IT leaders are better positioned to avoid mistakes while achieving key goals rapidly and effectively. Efficient CIOs also work hard to generate maximum business value, an attribute that management colleagues are sure to notice and appreciate.

Being efficient means producing high-quality, sustainable, and expected outcomes on time and on budget, says Christopher Kowalsky, an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.

Efficient CIOs work hard to streamline their duties, focusing on reliable ways of achieving maximum results within a minimal timeframe so they can quickly move onto their next task. They know that just a handful of efficiency techniques can have a major impact on their organizations and careers.

Leadership efficiency is a career-long commitment. Here are eight ways IT leaders create efficiency in their own work, thereby improving their long-term career prospects.

1. They trust their leadership team

CIOs have many responsibilities, but they can’t do everything. That’s why it’s important to build a talented leadership team and to trust its members to handle specific delegated tasks.

Jay Upchurch, executive vice president and CIO at software developer SAS, says that his leadership team gives him the freedom to delegate tasks and to trust that assigned tasks will be done on-time and with high quality. “It also helps me focus on the big initiatives and creates time for me to lead,” he explains. “Over time, we’ve developed trust plus a rhythm and comfort level that allows us work together seamlessly.”

Upchurch believes that efficiency suffers whenever a CIO feels that it’s important to know every detail of every product or service, understand every emerging technology, and read every management book. “If you spend all your time chasing that stuff, you’ll lose sight of the big priorities for your organization,” he says.

2. They plan meetings for maximum effectiveness

Whenever possible, efficient CIOs schedule and plan meetings in advance, giving themselves and team members plenty of time to prepare. “Make the meeting schedule a public and transparent part of IT governance,” advises Bill VanCuren, CIO at software and services company NCR.

The meeting calendar should maintain a balance of business, supplier/partner, project management office, and IT staff gatherings, VanCuren says. “Also keep empty spots on the calendar to allow for surprises or crisis management meetings that come along with the job.”

3. They create an operations playbook

Every CIO needs to build an operations playbook, says Anil Cheriyan, CTO and executive vice president of strategy at professional services firm Cognizant. The playbook should set and define agendas, content, and metrics for all CIO responsibilities, including business capability demand and delivery, investment governance, financials, talent, and cybersecurity risk. “Establishing this regular cadence immediately allows the CIO to efficiently oversee day-to-day operations,” he says.

With a foundational playbook in place, CIOs establish a solid framework for daily management. “Thus, they can spend more time driving innovation with internal and external partners,” Cheriyan says. “Moreover, when the playbook is operational, the IT team is better aligned on a common set of priorities, expectations, and outcomes.”

Without a playbook, CIOs tend to chase “rabbits,” Cheriyan says. “They lose sight of priorities and can get stuck engaging in endless debates on low-priority issues or dealing with poor team dynamics resulting from unclear responsibilities or expectations.”

4. They cultivate future leaders

Efficient and effective CIOs build and maintain contingency plans for times when they, or a key leader/expert, is absent, says Ola Chowning, a partner with technology research and advisory firm ISG. “Practice those plans by delegating unexpectedly,” she advises. Identify and select potential leaders from a pool of candidates.

Leadership contingency planning should be used to build new levels of leadership by giving top team members decision-making responsibilities and a sense of accountability. “It also frees the CIO to focus on the highest-priority decisions while building a bottom-up … decision culture,” Chowning says.

The decision timeline is always faster when it’s positioned closer to the actual work, and just as often correct, Chowning says. “It allows staff to feel confident in their ability to make decisions while limiting the unnecessary and often multi-step dilemma that often happens with hierarchical or chain decision-making,” she notes.

5. They prepare

Brook Colangelo, White House CIO during the Obama Administration, is a strong believer in ‘read-aheads’ — detailed agendas and materials prepared well in advance of key meetings. “These [notes] are a must so you can understand the issues … before making any decisions,” he says.

Colangelo, currently CIO at analytical laboratory instrument and software company Waters Corp., says his organization places an emphasis on being thoughtful and mindful. “When it comes to key meetings, whether inside our team or with other stakeholders, read-aheads are crucial to ensuring people have ample time to prepare and reflect on how to make decisions.” The approach also ensures that CIOs don’t waste time scheduling repeat meetings to cover topics that were missed during the initial go-round.

6. They banish breakdowns

Responding reactively to breakdowns, including failures in IT systems, security, team structure, or even content classification and governance, is a sure-fire time waster.

CIOs should assess systems and processes long before a breakdown occurs, suggests Ellen Benaim, CISO of document generation platform provider Templafy. “They need to take stock of the tools making an impact on their organization’s overall efficiency, security posture, and bottom line,” she says.

Benaim notes that it’s also important to take advantage of new products, services, and policies that can replace clunky, inefficient predecessors. “Whether it’s swapping out a spreadsheet for a database collaboration tool to streamline department-wide expense management, or turning to a content enablement solution to ensure more efficient document generation, the smartest CIOs lean on technology to keep up with today’s fast-paced business environment and look down the line to prepare for what’s next.”

7. They embrace automation

Automation improves CIO and team efficiency by reducing the number of time-consuming tasks. As enterprises dive deeper into sophisticated digital technologies, there’s been an exponential increase in complexity facing both IT teams and their leaders. Automation can make life simpler and easier.

Automation boosts efficiency by reducing the number of repetitive tasks and potential errors. “An augmented, more automated way of working minimizes the occurrence and/or time needed to correct mistakes,” says Greg Bentham, vice president of cloud infrastructure services and corporate social responsibility for business advisory firm Capgemini Americas. “Further, automated dashboards and visualization, which should be part of any workflow automation initiative, can provide an ‘at a glance view’ of the health and effectiveness of the ecosystem.”

Efficient CIOs realize that time is their most precious commodity. “They understand that employees bogged down with repetitive and mundane tasks have a lower probability of bringing innovation and creativity to the workplace, or worse, may become disengaged,” Bentham says.

8. They become Lean and Agile

CIOs need to emphasize work prioritization and avoid needless task switching, which is a huge efficiency killer, says Steve Padgett, CIO at Actian, a hybrid data management, cloud integration, and analytics products provider.

Borrowing a page from their development teams, CIOs can build efficiency by adopting Agile and Lean techniques to tackle projects and tasks. “Start one task and see it through to completion, then start on another task,” he suggests. “Focusing on one task at a time before moving on to the next also fits in well with other IT management practices and processes.”

As they strive for maximum efficiency, it’s important for CIOs to consider ways of moving projects forward in the least amount of time. “Employees, likewise, will be more productive with fewer meetings to attend and more focus time,” Padgett concludes.

IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , ,

In the coming years, NASA’s James Webb telescope will discover the edge of the observable universe, allowing astronomers to search for the very earliest stars and galaxies, formed more than 13 billion years ago.

That’s quite a contrast to today’s network operations visibility, which can sometimes feel like the lens cap has been left on the telescope. Explosive growth in new technology adoption, growing complexity, and the explosive use of internet and cloud networks has created unprecedented blind spots in how we monitor network delivery.

These visibility gaps obscure knowledge about critical applications and service performance. They can also hide security threats making them more difficult to detect. Ultimately, it can impact customer experience, revenue growth, and brand perception.

A global survey by Dimensional Research finds that 81% of organizations have network blind spots. More than 60% of larger companies state they have 50,000 or more network devices and 73% indicate it is growing increasingly difficult to manage their network. According to the study, removing network blind spots and increased monitoring coverage will improve security, reliability, and performance.

Dimensional Research also reports that current monitoring and operations solutions are ill-equipped for the tasks at hand and unable to support a massive influx of new technology over the next two years, leading to slower adoption and deployment with increased business risk.

Without solutions that deliver expanded visibility into remote locations, un-managed networks, and traffic patterns, IT can become overly dependent on end-users to report service issues after these problems have impacted performance. And no organization wants that to happen.

Performance insights across the edge infrastructure and beyond 

The massive adoption of SaaS and Cloud apps has made the job of IT even harder when it comes to understanding the performance of business functions. With no visibility into the internet that delivers these apps to users, IT is forced to resort to status pages and support tickets to determine if an outage does or does not affect users.

Now is the time to rethink network operations and evolve traditional NetOps into Experience-Driven NetOps. You need to extend visibility beyond the edge of the enterprise network to internet monitoring and bring modern capabilities like end-user experience monitoring, active testing of network delivery, and network path tracing into the network operations center. Only by being equipped with such capabilities can organizations ensure networks are experience-proven and network operations teams are experience-driven.  As a result, they gain credibility and build confidence in business users while delivering hybrid working and cloud transformations.

Take the real-world example of a major oil and gas services company. Most employees were set to work from home at the outset of the pandemic. The organization needed to scale up the WAN infrastructure from 10,000 to 60,000 users in just a few weeks. The challenge was to see into VPN gateways, ISP links, and Internet router performance to manage this increase in use.  By standardizing on a modern network monitoring platform, the company benefited from unified performance and capacity analytics that enabled making the right upgrade decisions to increase the number of remote workers by six-fold.

You can learn more about how to tackle the challenges of network visibility in this new eBook, Guide To Visibility Anywhere. Read now and discover how organizations can create network visibility anywhere.

Networking