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Navigating the Hybrid Work Challenge for Network Users

Destiny Bertucci
Auvik

The widespread shift to hybrid and remote work since the pandemic has complicated job responsibilities for network administrators who face complex new challenges to deliver dependable connectivity and security for their far-flung users. The 9-to-5 office weekday has already become a distant memory for most employees, replaced by a changing landscape that blends formal office workplaces with home offices, hotels, and neighborhood cafés.

To gain better industry context about how IT organizations are addressing these challenges, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and Auvik conducted a recent survey of more than 350 IT professionals who support the networking requirements of employees that work from home. From the research findings, it seems clear that most network operations teams are still struggling to solve this issue.

In Episode 2 of the MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA, discusses the network management impacts of remote work.


Virtually all IT organizations (96%) are already supporting hybrid workers, who now make up 30% of all employees. Based on these trendlines, nearly three-fourths of respondents (73%) reported an increase in their workloads following the shift from traditional work to hybrid work environments. These abrupt changes have created a tricky problem for IT teams because they no longer control all the network assets which employees need to access, but they still must provide a seamless user experience across all business operations. As a result, 87% of organizations have allocated budgets to update their network tools for remote and hybrid workers, but just 32% have reported being successful in their efforts.

These research findings reveal that the biggest barriers to the remote user experience include spotty service from home Wi-Fi setups, long physical distances from application servers, and poor quality from internet service providers. The two leading concerns for work-from-home employees involved their limited access to virtual private networks (VPNs) to establish digital connections between their computers and distant company servers, and recurring performance glitches with SaaS applications.

Rethinking Network Operations for Remote Troubleshooting

In this byzantine hybrid environment, most network automation tools are no longer adequate to perform the necessary steps for remote troubleshooting and remediation. More than three-fourths of organizations (76%) discovered a need to manage their network access policies across the patchwork of on-premises networks and remote users.

For all these reasons, 72% of organizations deployed network hardware to the homes of their remote staff. This included the installation of network security devices (63%) and improved Wi-Fi access points (54%). Furthermore, the increasing requirements to support hybrid office mobility caused 90% of organizations to upgrade their own internal Wi-Fi networks.

About half of all network operations teams (49%) also partnered with new tool vendors to help manage the network experience for remote workers. The most popular solutions included remote desktop access tools (81% of respondents), followed closely by endpoint monitoring tools (79%).

This sweeping move to a hybrid workforce is not just some lingering remnant from the pandemic – it is the undeniable future of work itself. The research findings indicate that network administrators and IT teams should take the time to do some self-reflection and understand their top priorities for overcoming these obstacles.

Businesses today must deliver the appropriate network tools and software to support their employees who choose to work from home, the office, or anywhere else for that matter. Making steady progress will require investments in secure solutions for remote network access, including integrated network security automation and centralized management consoles. By combining these important capabilities with modern observability tools, network admins can gain much greater visibility to monitor and manage network performance for the entire hybrid workforce, no matter where people are located. Navigating this ongoing challenge will require a steady hand on the wheel by IT leaders, but also an accurate roadmap to understand where they are coming from and where they still need to go.

Destiny Bertucci is Product Strategist at Auvik

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Navigating the Hybrid Work Challenge for Network Users

Destiny Bertucci
Auvik

The widespread shift to hybrid and remote work since the pandemic has complicated job responsibilities for network administrators who face complex new challenges to deliver dependable connectivity and security for their far-flung users. The 9-to-5 office weekday has already become a distant memory for most employees, replaced by a changing landscape that blends formal office workplaces with home offices, hotels, and neighborhood cafés.

To gain better industry context about how IT organizations are addressing these challenges, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and Auvik conducted a recent survey of more than 350 IT professionals who support the networking requirements of employees that work from home. From the research findings, it seems clear that most network operations teams are still struggling to solve this issue.

In Episode 2 of the MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Podcast, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA, discusses the network management impacts of remote work.


Virtually all IT organizations (96%) are already supporting hybrid workers, who now make up 30% of all employees. Based on these trendlines, nearly three-fourths of respondents (73%) reported an increase in their workloads following the shift from traditional work to hybrid work environments. These abrupt changes have created a tricky problem for IT teams because they no longer control all the network assets which employees need to access, but they still must provide a seamless user experience across all business operations. As a result, 87% of organizations have allocated budgets to update their network tools for remote and hybrid workers, but just 32% have reported being successful in their efforts.

These research findings reveal that the biggest barriers to the remote user experience include spotty service from home Wi-Fi setups, long physical distances from application servers, and poor quality from internet service providers. The two leading concerns for work-from-home employees involved their limited access to virtual private networks (VPNs) to establish digital connections between their computers and distant company servers, and recurring performance glitches with SaaS applications.

Rethinking Network Operations for Remote Troubleshooting

In this byzantine hybrid environment, most network automation tools are no longer adequate to perform the necessary steps for remote troubleshooting and remediation. More than three-fourths of organizations (76%) discovered a need to manage their network access policies across the patchwork of on-premises networks and remote users.

For all these reasons, 72% of organizations deployed network hardware to the homes of their remote staff. This included the installation of network security devices (63%) and improved Wi-Fi access points (54%). Furthermore, the increasing requirements to support hybrid office mobility caused 90% of organizations to upgrade their own internal Wi-Fi networks.

About half of all network operations teams (49%) also partnered with new tool vendors to help manage the network experience for remote workers. The most popular solutions included remote desktop access tools (81% of respondents), followed closely by endpoint monitoring tools (79%).

This sweeping move to a hybrid workforce is not just some lingering remnant from the pandemic – it is the undeniable future of work itself. The research findings indicate that network administrators and IT teams should take the time to do some self-reflection and understand their top priorities for overcoming these obstacles.

Businesses today must deliver the appropriate network tools and software to support their employees who choose to work from home, the office, or anywhere else for that matter. Making steady progress will require investments in secure solutions for remote network access, including integrated network security automation and centralized management consoles. By combining these important capabilities with modern observability tools, network admins can gain much greater visibility to monitor and manage network performance for the entire hybrid workforce, no matter where people are located. Navigating this ongoing challenge will require a steady hand on the wheel by IT leaders, but also an accurate roadmap to understand where they are coming from and where they still need to go.

Destiny Bertucci is Product Strategist at Auvik

Hot Topics

The Latest

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 ...

Image
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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...