The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for enterprises. Our CIO New Normal survey shows a litany of issues CIOs are dealing with. We discussed these challenges in our previous blogs here and here. But we also took note of the fact that some enterprises are actually doing quite well.

I think I have been reading way too many “doom and gloom” articles this year about IT. For many companies, the switch to a prolonged work-from-anywhere (WFA) model has exposed serious cracks within their IT infrastructure. To be honest though, the cards have been stacked against IT for some time and 2020 was just the tipping point. Employees often resist new work technologies and there’s mounting evidence to prove that IT tends to overestimate how well their services are received.

Cloud adoption has continued to push the momentum on digital transformation. The initial apprehension within enterprises on managing the disruption caused by the ongoing pandemic has slowly waned. Enterprises now have a clearer picture of the situation and are moving forward. The need for online collaboration and online meetings has forced most enterprises to rely more on cloud services for managing their workforce and to provide an environment that allows employees to work remotely.

Most businesses rely on communication and collaboration tools like email, Zoom, Teams, etc. So, staying connected over a reliable network can go a long way to increase efficiency and security in the day to day business. A corporate network that connects geographically dispersed users, from areas that could be anywhere in the world, is called an Enterprise WAN. Every enterprise has special use cases for certain network designs that meet the specific needs of the individual business.

Remote and flexible working isn’t just changing where we work, it’s changing how we work. “The vision is changing, the game is changing,” explains Yasser Fouad Ramadan (Deputy General Manager, Head of IT Governance at Banque du Caire).

In today’s world of remote workers and distributed teams, a seamless digital user experience is the most significant aspect driving productivity and collaboration and Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) allows an enterprise or service provider to optimize the performance of critical cloud productivity and collaboration tools, for a smooth user experience.

In our last post on Catchpoint’s 2020 CIO New Normal Survey we talked about how COVID-19 is driving a “reverse industrial revolution” that is fueling a mass exodus from America’s biggest (and most expensive) cities. This week, we focus on a more pragmatic set of findings: the IT lessons that we can learn from those American enterprises that have fared the best during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital experience monitoring is only effective if incidents are detected immediately and the data aids in quick root cause analysis and resolution. To track the availability, reachability, performance, and reliability of each component in the application delivery chain, different teams within an organization, use multiple tools. Each of these tools generate huge volumes of data that can make it difficult to gain any meaningful insight or even to correlate relevant KPIs.

On August 30th CenturyLink/Level3 faced major IP outages across its Global Network. This incident adversely impacted all their customers, ISPs, and other digital services around the world.