Gaps in network visibility and security are facing the majority of IT teams, especially as remote and hybrid work continues, according to the 2023 Network IT Management Report from Auvik, based on a survey of 4,500 IT professionals across North America.
Gaps in Network Visibility
The report states that 86% of respondents support a remote workforce at least some of the time, but only half are performing SaaS and Cloud monitoring or Wi-Fi management — critical components of the new enterprise network in today's hybrid world.
SaaS and cloud applications (e.g. Salesforce, Slack, G Suite, Microsoft 365, Zoom, etc.) are how employees are getting work done. These apps as well as the Wi-Fi employees are using at home (or at a hotel, a coffee shop, etc.) pose potential security risks to the enterprise network, and thus IT teams must have visibility and solutions for enabling their workforce to be productive while minimizing risk.
In recognition of this need and current gaps, 30% of the survey respondents reported that they are planning to invest in Wi-Fi management and/or SaaS and Cloud monitoring solutions within the next 12 months.
"A growing trend we at Auvik have observed — and which the findings of our 2023 report reinforce — is that IT teams are increasingly measured on their ability to deliver a seamless experience to end users and keep them productive," said Alex Hoff, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Auvik. "45% of this year's respondents said they are measured on the satisfaction of their end user or customer. When an employee experiences slowness on their device, network or in an application they are using, the responsibility to resolve that issue falls to the IT team, who are often working with blind spots and a constantly-changing environment."
In January of this year, more than 2 million people experienced power outages due to the storms in California, and many of those individuals then went to coffee shops or friends or relatives' homes to work, introducing new Wi-Fi connections, potentially new devices and other components that affect the end user experience. IT teams must have the tools to monitor, manage and support employees' work experiences from any location, at any time.
Network Configurations Pose Visibility and Security Challenges
Another serious visibility and security gap facing IT teams is with network configurations. The Auvik report found 45% of IT teams do not fully know the configuration of their networks, and 21% responded that individuals outside of ITOps, perhaps in adjacent departments like DevOps, are making configuration changes.
What's more, 20% of respondents said configuration changes are occurring on a daily basis, and another 33% said they're happening at least weekly. With unknown and non-IT employees making frequent changes to the network's configuration, the security risks increase significantly.
Additional key findings from the report include:
■ 41.5% of respondents said network documentation is updated monthly or less often — despite 53% reporting that configuration changes are happening daily or weekly
■ 61% of respondents believe a lack of time and money are restricting their ability to better serve their colleagues and clients
■ Budget/Costs, Security, and Shortage of skilled professionals are the top three challenges facing IT teams
■ 73% of respondents outsource some of their network-related tasks
■ 42% of respondents are tracked on the percentage of uptime and downtime at their organization
A single hour of server downtime costs most small to mid-sized enterprises $300,000, and can cost larger organizations more than $5 million
"The network has evolved from assets solely owned by the IT organization to anything that allows the team to connect to their application, which results in greater change and complexity for the end user experience," Hoff continued. "This means greater chances for a poor end user experience and decreased productivity, security risks, and network downtime, which directly impacts the bottom line. According to the Information Technology Industry Council, a single hour of server downtime costs most small to mid-sized enterprises $300,000, and can cost larger organizations more than $5 million. Visibility is critical to reach what we call The Last Mile of the Office Network and ensure the remote workforce remains safe, connected and productive."
The Latest
Incident management processes are not keeping pace with the demands of modern operations teams, failing to meet the needs of SREs as well as platform and ops teams. Results from the State of DevOps Automation and AI Survey, commissioned by Transposit, point to an incident management paradox. Despite nearly 60% of ITOps and DevOps professionals reporting they have a defined incident management process that's fully documented in one place and over 70% saying they have a level of automation that meets their needs, teams are unable to quickly resolve incidents ...
Today, in the world of enterprise technology, the challenges posed by legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems have long been a source of concern for IT departments. In many instances, this promising solution has become an organizational burden, hindering progress, depleting resources, and taking a psychological and operational toll on employees ...
Within retail organizations across the world, IT teams will be bracing themselves for a hectic holiday season ... While this is an exciting opportunity for retailers to boost sales, it also intensifies severe risk. Any application performance slipup will cause consumers to turn their back on brands, possibly forever. Online shoppers will be completely unforgiving to any retailer who doesn't deliver a seamless digital experience ...
Black Friday is a time when consumers can cash in on some of the biggest deals retailers offer all year long ... Nearly two-thirds of consumers utilize a retailer's web and mobile app for holiday shopping, raising the stakes for competitors to provide the best online experience to retain customer loyalty. Perforce's 2023 Black Friday survey sheds light on consumers' expectations this time of year and how developers can properly prepare their applications for increased online traffic ...
This holiday shopping season, the stakes for online retailers couldn't be higher ... Even an hour or two of downtime for a digital storefront during this critical period can cost millions in lost revenue and has the potential to damage brand credibility. Savvy retailers are increasingly investing in observability to help ensure a seamless, omnichannel customer experience. Just ahead of the holiday season, New Relic released its State of Observability for Retail report, which offers insight and analysis on the adoption and business value of observability for the global retail/consumer industry ...
As organizations struggle to find and retain the talent they need to manage complex cloud implementations, many are leaning toward hybrid cloud as a solution ... While it's true that using the cloud is not a "one size fits all" proposition, it is clear that both large and small companies prefer a hybrid cloud model ...
In the same way a city is a sum of its districts and neighborhoods, complex IT systems are made of many components that continually interact. Observability requires a comprehensive and connected view of all aspects of the system, including even some that don't directly relate to its technological innards ...
Multicasting in this context refers to the process of directing data streams to two or more destinations. This might look like sending the same telemetry data to both an on-premises storage system and a cloud-based observability platform concurrently. The two principal benefits of this strategy are cost savings and service redundancy ...
In today's rapidly evolving business environment, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) are grappling with the challenge of regaining control over their IT roadmap. The constant evolution and introduction of new technology releases, combined with the pressure to deliver innovation on shrinking budgets, has added layers of complexity for executives who must transform the perception of the role of the IT leader from cost managers and maintainers to strategic enablers of growth and profitability ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) has saturated the conversation around technology as compelling new tools like ChatGPT produce headlines every day. Enterprise leaders have correctly identified the potential of AI — and its many tributary technologies — to generate new efficiencies at scale, particularly in the cloud era. But as we now know, these technologies are rarely plug-and-play, for reasons both technical and human ...
