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Organizations Renew Focus on End-User Experience as UCC Troubleshooting Headaches Escalate

As organizations continue to adapt to a post-pandemic surge in cloud-based productivity, the 2023 State of the Network report from Viavi Solutions details how end-user awareness remains critical and explores the benefits — and challenges — of cloud and off-premises network modernization initiatives.

One theme carried over from the previous years' studies was the perseverance and resilience IT teams are building as they manage network performance while balancing new technology deployment, security threats and visibility gaps. Both SD-WAN and cloud-based services have reached nearly 100% adoption, with zero-trust network access (ZTNA) deployment on the rise as a cybersecurity priority.

End-user experience is the highest-ranking key performance indicator (KPI) among IT teams, with 7 in 10 considering it more important than other KPIs derived through active monitoring, packets, and flow data.


The report also highlights the inherent monitoring challenges involved in the transition to a remote-first, cloud-native modern enterprise. Around 70% of organizations surveyed say more than half of their applications are hosted in the cloud. However, fewer than 1% of organizations say they are satisfied with network visibility, with 4 in 5 citing visibility of cloud or off-premises assets as a top concern. TLS encryption, vital for enhancing IT cybersecurity, also complicates visibility objectives.

Troubleshooting teams are also under increased pressure. Echoing findings from 14 of the past 15 surveys, problem domain isolation — pinpointing issues across network, server, application, or client domains — remains one of the biggest challenges for IT teams. The inability to adequately monitor bandwidth consumption ranks close behind. IT teams also cited the number of tools needed to resolve specific issues as a primary concern, and sourcing the requisite talent to troubleshoot network performance issues remains a key obstacle.

As organizations continue to adopt Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC), the nature of UCC's near real-time performance demands is becoming more apparent. According to the report, nearly half (49%) of teams spend between 10 and 20 hours per week troubleshooting UCC platforms, with 42% spending up to 10 hours per week.

Despite the increased workload on troubleshooting teams, 83% of organizations said that the benefits of cloud modernization, including savings and increased productivity, outweighed the costs.

"The words 'perseverance' and 'resilience' spring to mind when considering the effort IT teams are putting into ensuring service delivery in the current environment," commented Chris Labac, VP and GM, Network Performance and Threat Solutions, VIAVI. "Organizations understand the growing demand for bandwidth and the myriad benefits of becoming remote-first, cloud-oriented enterprises and are determined to follow through on their plans. However, visibility over off-premise areas such as SASE devices, cloud-hosted services, and the general experience of remote users, has never been more important."

He continued, "Organizations can overcome many of these critical challenges with more automated problem identification and domain isolation capabilities. Automation efforts should also mean IT teams spend less time in the war room and more time driving strategic initiatives."

Methodology: VIAVI (and previously Network Instruments) has conducted its State of the Network global study for 15 consecutive years, drawing insight about network trends and identifying some of the challenges faced by IT teams. Results were compiled from 307 respondents including network, security, and development operations professionals from around the world. In addition to geographic diversity, the study population was distributed by age, industry experience, current level, job function, department, revenue, employee count, and business verticals.

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Organizations Renew Focus on End-User Experience as UCC Troubleshooting Headaches Escalate

As organizations continue to adapt to a post-pandemic surge in cloud-based productivity, the 2023 State of the Network report from Viavi Solutions details how end-user awareness remains critical and explores the benefits — and challenges — of cloud and off-premises network modernization initiatives.

One theme carried over from the previous years' studies was the perseverance and resilience IT teams are building as they manage network performance while balancing new technology deployment, security threats and visibility gaps. Both SD-WAN and cloud-based services have reached nearly 100% adoption, with zero-trust network access (ZTNA) deployment on the rise as a cybersecurity priority.

End-user experience is the highest-ranking key performance indicator (KPI) among IT teams, with 7 in 10 considering it more important than other KPIs derived through active monitoring, packets, and flow data.


The report also highlights the inherent monitoring challenges involved in the transition to a remote-first, cloud-native modern enterprise. Around 70% of organizations surveyed say more than half of their applications are hosted in the cloud. However, fewer than 1% of organizations say they are satisfied with network visibility, with 4 in 5 citing visibility of cloud or off-premises assets as a top concern. TLS encryption, vital for enhancing IT cybersecurity, also complicates visibility objectives.

Troubleshooting teams are also under increased pressure. Echoing findings from 14 of the past 15 surveys, problem domain isolation — pinpointing issues across network, server, application, or client domains — remains one of the biggest challenges for IT teams. The inability to adequately monitor bandwidth consumption ranks close behind. IT teams also cited the number of tools needed to resolve specific issues as a primary concern, and sourcing the requisite talent to troubleshoot network performance issues remains a key obstacle.

As organizations continue to adopt Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC), the nature of UCC's near real-time performance demands is becoming more apparent. According to the report, nearly half (49%) of teams spend between 10 and 20 hours per week troubleshooting UCC platforms, with 42% spending up to 10 hours per week.

Despite the increased workload on troubleshooting teams, 83% of organizations said that the benefits of cloud modernization, including savings and increased productivity, outweighed the costs.

"The words 'perseverance' and 'resilience' spring to mind when considering the effort IT teams are putting into ensuring service delivery in the current environment," commented Chris Labac, VP and GM, Network Performance and Threat Solutions, VIAVI. "Organizations understand the growing demand for bandwidth and the myriad benefits of becoming remote-first, cloud-oriented enterprises and are determined to follow through on their plans. However, visibility over off-premise areas such as SASE devices, cloud-hosted services, and the general experience of remote users, has never been more important."

He continued, "Organizations can overcome many of these critical challenges with more automated problem identification and domain isolation capabilities. Automation efforts should also mean IT teams spend less time in the war room and more time driving strategic initiatives."

Methodology: VIAVI (and previously Network Instruments) has conducted its State of the Network global study for 15 consecutive years, drawing insight about network trends and identifying some of the challenges faced by IT teams. Results were compiled from 307 respondents including network, security, and development operations professionals from around the world. In addition to geographic diversity, the study population was distributed by age, industry experience, current level, job function, department, revenue, employee count, and business verticals.

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The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

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An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...