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As Remote Work Takes Off, Network Visibility Helps IT Keep Pace

Paul Davenport
AppNeta

While remote work policies have been gaining steam for the better part of the past decade across the enterprise space — driven in large part by more agile and scalable, cloud-delivered business solutions — recent events have pushed adoption into overdrive.

For starters, anxieties surrounding the global spread of the COVID-19 virus have encouraged business leaders to let employees collaborate via UCaaS and collaboration tools from remote locations rather than convene in group settings that could make workers vulnerable to exposure. But the remote work movement was gaining steam well before that, as factors like commuting and the environment have simply made allowing flexibility for how and where employees get the job done a more logical and cost-effective policy.

As a result, managing user experience at remote offices has become an integral part of the job for modern enterprise IT. But in most cases, when the number of remote locations the network supports increases, IT operations remain centrally located, as staffing a physical presence at each new office would eat into the cost savings and efficiency that cloud and SaaS tools are meant to enable. While these efficiencies are hugely beneficial to the business, they do fundamentally change the level of visibility IT used to have when teams were centralized and issues could be quickly addressed on-premises.

Without solutions that deliver visibility into remote locations or provide insight into traffic from those locations, IT can become overly dependent on end users to report app performance issues — and usually only after these problems have impacted performance. The trouble with this is that end users may be quick to blame the network for performance issues when the real culprit may be the app itself, not the underlying infrastructure.

When visibility into remote office performance is lacking, IT teams frequently end up wasting time and budget getting to the bottom of issues that are impacting users across the business. When dealing with poorly performing apps, not only do end users become unproductive and start missing deadlines, but IT often gets sidelined because they’re constantly putting out fires rather than getting strategic initiatives off the ground. This will Inevitably start to impact the reputation of the IT team, as performance issues become chronic and remote users are constantly frustrated.

Embracing Automation to Gain Visibility

With an automated monitoring strategy that can deliver a local perspective into issues hindering remote locations, IT can be proactively alerted to network and application performance problems before users are even impacted. This arms IT with the ability to quickly know if performance-impacting issues are caused by flaws with the enterprise infrastructure, service providers, connecting networks or the apps themselves.

Comprehensive visibility into the performance of every app, user, and location is also critical in helping IT ensure their network is equipped with the requirements necessary to support the new breed of cloud and SaaS tools users rely on most. This can help illuminate areas of the network where IT could leverage more cost-effective connectivity options like local Internet breakouts or SD-WAN connectivity instead of MPLS or other private circuits.

When IT can ensure they have complete visibility into their remote locations, they can more predictably ensure end users aren’t meaningfully impacted by performance issues, while also starting to think strategically about how to plan for the future. Visibility empowers teams to more predictably budget for projects and ensure they meet their goals on schedule, even allowing them to investigate and deliver more cost-effective connectivity at remote locations.

Paul Davenport is Marketing Communications Manager at AppNeta

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As Remote Work Takes Off, Network Visibility Helps IT Keep Pace

Paul Davenport
AppNeta

While remote work policies have been gaining steam for the better part of the past decade across the enterprise space — driven in large part by more agile and scalable, cloud-delivered business solutions — recent events have pushed adoption into overdrive.

For starters, anxieties surrounding the global spread of the COVID-19 virus have encouraged business leaders to let employees collaborate via UCaaS and collaboration tools from remote locations rather than convene in group settings that could make workers vulnerable to exposure. But the remote work movement was gaining steam well before that, as factors like commuting and the environment have simply made allowing flexibility for how and where employees get the job done a more logical and cost-effective policy.

As a result, managing user experience at remote offices has become an integral part of the job for modern enterprise IT. But in most cases, when the number of remote locations the network supports increases, IT operations remain centrally located, as staffing a physical presence at each new office would eat into the cost savings and efficiency that cloud and SaaS tools are meant to enable. While these efficiencies are hugely beneficial to the business, they do fundamentally change the level of visibility IT used to have when teams were centralized and issues could be quickly addressed on-premises.

Without solutions that deliver visibility into remote locations or provide insight into traffic from those locations, IT can become overly dependent on end users to report app performance issues — and usually only after these problems have impacted performance. The trouble with this is that end users may be quick to blame the network for performance issues when the real culprit may be the app itself, not the underlying infrastructure.

When visibility into remote office performance is lacking, IT teams frequently end up wasting time and budget getting to the bottom of issues that are impacting users across the business. When dealing with poorly performing apps, not only do end users become unproductive and start missing deadlines, but IT often gets sidelined because they’re constantly putting out fires rather than getting strategic initiatives off the ground. This will Inevitably start to impact the reputation of the IT team, as performance issues become chronic and remote users are constantly frustrated.

Embracing Automation to Gain Visibility

With an automated monitoring strategy that can deliver a local perspective into issues hindering remote locations, IT can be proactively alerted to network and application performance problems before users are even impacted. This arms IT with the ability to quickly know if performance-impacting issues are caused by flaws with the enterprise infrastructure, service providers, connecting networks or the apps themselves.

Comprehensive visibility into the performance of every app, user, and location is also critical in helping IT ensure their network is equipped with the requirements necessary to support the new breed of cloud and SaaS tools users rely on most. This can help illuminate areas of the network where IT could leverage more cost-effective connectivity options like local Internet breakouts or SD-WAN connectivity instead of MPLS or other private circuits.

When IT can ensure they have complete visibility into their remote locations, they can more predictably ensure end users aren’t meaningfully impacted by performance issues, while also starting to think strategically about how to plan for the future. Visibility empowers teams to more predictably budget for projects and ensure they meet their goals on schedule, even allowing them to investigate and deliver more cost-effective connectivity at remote locations.

Paul Davenport is Marketing Communications Manager at AppNeta

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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