As part of the Digital Experience Monitoring - Telco's Next Gamechanger' campaign, The Fast Mode spoke to Tom Foottit who is the VP of Product Line Management at Accedian on how DEM is shaping enterprise IT monitoring as the adoption of Cloud and SaaS becomes increasingly widespread, and as the 'new normal' introduced by the recent pandemic creates new security vulnerabilities and performance implications. The interview is as follows:
Why is there so much interest in DEM?
As a result of COVID-19, there’s been a renewed interest in Digital Experience Management (DEM) from enterprises and service providers looking to ensure positive digital experiences. With distributed workforces, people are accessing apps and services on multiple networks in various cloud environments. As a result, the end user experience is no longer based on the performance of one network, but rather, a combination of network service and application providers, the internet, and enterprise networks. With DEM, enterprises and service providers alike have visibility into the end user experience, allowing them to more effectively engage with customers on all digital channels and leverage the insights gleaned from every interaction to ensure optimal performance of applications and services in the new normal.
Tom Foottit, VP Product Line Management, Accedian
How does DEM change existing enterprise IT and application performance monitoring?
IT departments and network operators at enterprises and service providers are responsible for the end user experience. But with today’s remote workforces accessing services and applications on various devices in the cloud and on personal networks, it's become increasingly difficult for IT teams to have visibility into performance and the end user experience. With DEM, IT teams and network operators are able to take into account the performance of various applications accessed on a combination of networks and cloud environments, allowing enterprises and service providers to see how customers engage with their products and services online. This gives teams more time to focus on business priorities, rather than spending significant time and resources on troubleshooting.
What are your key solutions for DEM?
The Accedian Skylight solution allows organizations to monitor a combination of real user behavior, synthetic transactions and end point activity to understand performance issues, as well as what’s fueling digital engagement. They’re able to leverage synthetic transaction monitoring to gauge how potential actions of users impact performance; they’re also able to monitor real user and end point activity to better understand what is and isn’t driving engaging experiences online - ultimately improving the customer experience and cultivating brand loyalty.
What are some of the challenges you foresee in getting more enterprises to adopt DEM?
Remote workforces have resulted in a proliferation of end points (e.g. more and more people are using different devices, operating systems, software, applications, etc.), which introduces a challenge for performance monitoring. When monitoring thousands of end points, handling the logistics alone can be a challenge for IT teams. Incorporating countless end points into a DEM solution is not an easy thing to do, especially for larger organizations with hundreds of thousands of employees in disparate locations, using various devices. Enterprises will need to look at a DEM solution that provides a holistic view of the customer experience and allows for deployment that is affordable and maintainable for their IT teams.
