In today's fast-paced business world, even small changes in network performance can have a significant impact on a company's bottom line. In some cases, these changes can be the difference between profit and loss. Many customers expect a seamless online experience when interacting with any website. If a website or online platform is slow or difficult to use, it can lead to frustration and a lack of trust in the company. This can result in lost customers and revenue.
In fact, it has been over fifteen years since Amazon first revealed that every 100 milliseconds of network latency cost them 1 percent in sales, while Google found an extra half a second in search page generation time reduced dropped by 20 percent. At that time, there were far fewer organisations where the business was entirely dependent on the network. Now, fifteen years later, the COVID-19 pandemic and the rules that were put in place around the world, changes have resulted in rapid changes to how we use technology. It's very important now to understand what success means for everyone involved in a project and how to make it happen. This includes making sure that we're using and organizing different information sources well.
The Network IS Your Business
VIAVI Solutions has been doing a study for over 14 years, called State of the Network Study, to see how networks affect businesses. They ask people who work with networks and security about the things that mattered to them in the past year. This year, for the first time, the biggest issue wasn't about technology. It was about finding the right people with the right skills to help with network problems. People are also focusing on being innovative and have doubled their budgets for it..
Network monitoring faces a number of challenges including:
- Secure Active Service Edge (SASE), the convergence of wide area networking and network security services
- Augmented Intelligence Operations (AIOps), integrating of AI techniques with innovative operations services
- Software-defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN), running over whatever WAN connections are available
- Internet of Things (IoT,) which is the world of interconnected intelligent devices, each with its own internet address
- Private 5G, high quality, high bandwidth, low latency wireless networking over 5G
- User experience for unified communications services and collaborative conferencing solutions
Identifying and Addressing Key Concerns
One company that provides financial services in North America needed to improve their network monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD). They wanted a solution that was easy to use, didn't need a lot of help from experts, and could keep track of both performance and security. They also wanted to be able to figure out what was causing problems. The company's goals were to use fewer people, share information with the right teams (including security), and let the right people know about problems based on what caused them.
The company chose a product called the VIAVI Observer Platform because they thought it would help them reach their goals. It helped them see quickly if problems were with the network, a computer, a client, or an application, and sent the issues to the right team. The security team was happy because it helped them avoid wasting time and resources on fake problems. They also liked that the data was complete and unchanged.
The company installed the product right before the COVID-19 pandemic and it has been really helpful in fixing problems with remote work and virtual private networks (VPNs). VPN performance reports are now looked at every day by the company's top leaders.
Effective NPMD solutions that help identify network issues faster, give more warning about problems, and help find traffic problems quickly can lead to better business outcomes. To learn more about how important networks are for businesses and how organisations use NPMD solutions, you can read a report called 'The Criticality of the Network in the Future of Business.'
