Why Network Monitoring Must Evolve To Meet IT Needs in a Hybrid Workplace

To fully appreciate just how much enterprise IT pro’s day-to-day has transformed in a work-from-anywhere (WFA) world, it helps to understand just how much transformation was underway before the pandemic closed physical offices across the globe. 

Prior to COVID-19, network operations teams were already straddling a fine line between the areas that they had control over (and visibility into) and those that they didn’t. These considerations fell into three general areas: end users, applications, and the networks connecting the two. 

These three areas were fully in IT’s control when everyone followed a 9-5, office-based schedule: Users all shared connectivity from a single location (if not a web of MPLS-connected remote offices), and while the emergence of cloud and SaaS complicated things by pulling some inherent visibility and control out of the hands of enterprise IT, the march to cloud was at least taking place at a pace teams could manage.

The pandemic pulled almost all three areas immediately out from under IT’s control, right at a time when IT was never more essential to ensuring the success of the larger business. Users were now all logging on via unique connections, leveraging Internet pathways that weren’t commercial-grade or SLA-backed, and using a new breed of cloud-delivered tools that had the potential to weigh heavily on these untested channels.

Learn More: Network Disaggregation Offers Key Benefits to Mobile Operators as 5G Rolls Out 

Remote Work Challenges Continue for IT Teams

With the ultimate goal of continuing to keep the enterprise connected and productive, IT teams are challenged with a broader surface area, new types of problems and low or potentially no end user visibility.

 While many workers are forecast to start returning to the office this fall, the challenges that were pushed to the fore for IT teams during the pandemic won’t be going away any time soon. Not only are many workers set to stay remote indefinitely now that they’ve proven themselves in a remote setting, but businesses don’t want to be caught off guard if they’re forced to unexpectedly shutter their real estate holdings in the face of another global event. 

 This is calling for enterprise IT teams to start monitoring areas of their decentralized, distributed network that they may not have had to take into consideration in the past. 

Learn More: Decoding Intent-Based Networking To Automate Troubleshooting and Increase Network Uptime 

IT Needs Better Visibility Across All Workflows

Specifically, when dealing with work-from-home (WFH) users—a huge cohort today and going forward—IT teams need to gain visibility not just into how applications are being delivered out to residences, but even how those users are accessing the cloud environments hosting their business-critical workflows. 

The new domains that need to be monitored to capture this unique perspective (and zero in on root cause when issues arise) are now:

• Transit backbone (or core network path): Visibility into the mid-path network (i.e. hops and hand-offs between the hosting infrastructure and the end user’s local environment) is important so IT teams can correlate performance over different paths to pinpoint issues that only occur over specific systems.
• The application: Whether this is a Microsoft Teams‘ PoP in Azure, or the enterprise’s own cloud-based infrastructure, enterprise IT teams need visibility into common environments from the outside-in.
• End-user connectivity (aka the last 50 feet): When issues occur, network ops teams must be able to visualize end-user experience quickly by understanding if there’s a crowded mess of devices fighting for network capacity, if users are wireless or wired, or even if a backup kicks off locally, as these can all grind productivity to a halt.
• Last-mile: Since residential internet isn’t backed up by traditional, commercial-grade SLAs,  IT teams need a way to visualize if these connections are receiving the necessary upload and download speeds needed to support remote work success.
• Host metrics: If users are still reporting issues (and there are no leads on root cause within the areas of visibility outlined above), IT can quickly understand that it’s not an app or network issue. This calls for teams to drill into what is happening on the user’s workstation. Is it overloaded, for instance, or is there a particular process that is loading it down?

With all of this data in concert, IT teams can quickly speed up diagnosis when issues arise, and take appropriate steps to prioritize resolution at scale. While teams will never regain complete control over the users, apps, and network connections, they can better manage performance when they know what problem areas to watch out for in a hybrid work setting. 

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