During corona, care for your networks’ health
With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and Covid-19, the disease which it causes, all work has moved from the office to the home. But that hasn’t relieved the heavy demand on business networks. Far from it, in fact: enterprise networks still need to perform at a high standard so that work-from-home users can access their business applications via on-premise resources remotely to get their job done. For essential businesses, this is crucial since they need to operate even better than usual and continue providing essential services including food production and distribution, community emergency services, health tests and medical services.
The corona-induced rise of remote working
The new normal has forced people to network virtually. Events were reconvened online, meetings became conference calls, in-person demos moved online. The closure of schools and universities saw lessons hurriedly switch to Learning Management Systems, video-conferencing platforms, and remote teaching software.
Remote working ramped up as cities, regions, and countries applied restrictions on the number of people who could be in the office at once. At the same time, essential businesses and critical organizations experienced even higher utilization of their network infrastructure.
Covid-19 raises new difficulties for enterprise networks
Many employees who work remotely still utilize the enterprise network infrastructure which becomes more critical than ever. Enterprises ensure network connectivity with VPNs connecting to service provider networks. The end user experience focuses on the quality they experience, which is crucial to both the end-users and to the business. The impact of heavy VPN use changes the traffic pattern into/out of the company network. Companies need to keep up firewall controls, warnings about potential data breaches or security vulnerabilities and to respond rapidly. They need to control traffic behavior, with the surge in video conferencing, spot bottlenecks, and ensure correct network resource allocation in order to keep viable network services up and running at capacity. For some IT teams, this might be the first time that they’ve had to support remote working at any kind of scale, and the challenges are immense.
It’s a difficult job at the best of times, but it’s made far harder when working remotely. The task is even more challenging for MSPs, which may have to support multiple such networks for dozens of clients, focusing on individual end-user experience for users scattered around the country or the world. At the same time, critical businesses need to ramp up their network infrastructures and capacity to support the growing needs of their internal usage and those who need to access their services. Being able to control their network infrastructure has an impact on their ability to support this new reality and its recovery.
The NetOp.Cloud SaaS advantage
NetOp.Cloud offers vital tools to help network managers and IT teams remain in control of their networks even during the coronavirus outbreak. NetOp is a cloud-based system, so it can be accessed and managed from any device without requiring network managers to be on-site or to use on-premise tools.
With NetOp, you can get visibility into network performance from anywhere in the world. Troubleshooting and remediating connectivity for workers across the country is no longer a problem. NetOp also automates the process of provisioning new fabrics so that you can set up new remote networks faster and more easily than before.
The AI engine is proactive in identifying and predicting network issues before they develop into emergencies, resulting in greater uptime and fewer disruptions for WFH employees. Use NetOp to see the physical and logical topology of the internal body of the network, and predict bottlenecks and issues that will cause low performance. With NetOp’s automated remediation, networks can heal themselves, saving time and effort for IT teams who are trying to manage a complex network from a distance.
NetOp.Cloud helps keep your networks in good health
Social distancing and quarantine rules intended to curb the spread of Covid-19 have led to millions of people working from home, and thousands of enterprises — many of them essential to the fight against the pandemic — tackling the challenges of supporting remote work on a massive scale, many for the first time. With network managers subject to the same social distancing restrictions and enterprise VPNs stretched to the limit, businesses need the extra help from NetOp to predict, identify, and remediate connectivity bottlenecks, network traffic and performance issues to ensure that business networks never falter.
Image credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Ilka Cole
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