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Now that the initial shock of the pandemic is behind us, and with businesses having successfully adapted to the new normal, it’s worth taking a minute to examine just how well organisations have adapted to dramatic shifts in employee and customer engagement dynamics. According to research from Riverbed, at the peak of lockdowns last year, 69 percent of business decision makers were not completely prepared to support extensive remote work, despite 95 percent of leaders being comfortable with the idea of employees working remotely. A key divide in those who responded well to the challenge and those who struggled was their network infrastructure and the split between cloud native companies and those operating on hybrid systems.
With shadows of economic uncertainty still remaining, it’s important for businesses to utilise the current period to reflect on whether their IT ecosystems are indeed future ready. Understanding the difference between cloud native and hybrid, and how can businesses utilise their infrastructure to grow is at the heart of this exercise.
The state of play for hybrid systems
COVID-19, and the resultant geographical spread of employees has exposed a fair share of challenges and businesses that continue to operate on hybrid systems – a model combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure – may struggle in the years ahead. For the first time, IT teams were faced with ensuring that the entire workforce could connect remotely to the central business network, with the same efficiency and speed they experienced in the office. In addition, technicians were expected to troubleshoot problems and maintain a seamless experience for the workforce. All while employees simultaneously accessed the network from multiple at-home devices, inevitably overloading the networks. These paradigms are set to define the workplace of the future.
What’s more, the sprawling nature of the hybrid infrastructure means IT teams are left with a complete lack of visibility into their network performance and employee activity. Subsequently, they are now faced with a vast increase in performance issues. According to Riverbed’s latest research, weaker employee productivity (37%), increased anxiety (36%), lack of work motivation (34%) and difficulty engaging with customers (34%) are all impacts of poor visibility across hybrid networks.
The advantages of a cloud native approach
By contrast to their hybrid counterparts, cloud native businesses – which have their systems exclusively based in the cloud – found the transition to remote working far easier. With no on-premises infrastructure to grapple with, employees could work from home, much as they did from the office, with little-to-no impact on their ability to access the applications and files that they needed.
This was facilitated by the cloud’s innate qualities that lend it to flexible working practices. For example, cloud infrastructure can be quickly and reliably scaled up or down according to the business capacity and needs. As such, cloud native businesses are inherently better at responding to uncertainty and change. For example, the increased demand caused by the mass shift to remote working in response to the COVID-19 lockdown was easier to deal with when having a cloud-based infrastructure. This is because it is not possible for employees to overload the network while they try to run applications across multiple devices, as there is no central network for them to have to connect through.
It’s the ability of the cloud to be spun up quickly and scaled rapidly that is empowering companies to raise the bar on productivity and innovation, both now and in the foreseeable future.
Visibility and optimising performance for all
Although the initial transition to remote working may have been simpler for the cloud native companies, there are additional steps all businesses should follow to ensure success as we emerge out of the pandemic. Namely, ensuring they have visibility over their network infrastructure. An increasingly important consideration given Middle East business decision makers report an average of 28% of their teams will work remote post-pandemic.
Regardless of whether a business is hybrid or cloud native, it is essential for its leaders to invest in the right network performance management solutions which provide a comprehensive overview of all the activity on the network so that issues can be identified and resolved quickly. This means embracing technology that not only collects information from every device connected, but also analyses and produces insights from the data across all user applications. With this insight, businesses across multiple infrastructures are in a better position to respond to slow running applications or troubleshoot any network inefficiencies employees may be experiencing.
In addition to the right network performance management technologies, businesses must also implement application acceleration tools to mitigate the impact of latency and bandwidth related network issues. Used in conjunction with increased visibility of the network, these tools allow organisations to optimise application performance, drive employee productivity and ultimately ensure the long-term success of business operations.
Middle East business decision makers are already recognising the importance of this technology. Nearly 4 in 5 (79%) business decision makers from UAE & Saudi Arabia plan to make additional technology investments through this year to enhance remote working performance, according to Riverbed’s research. Now business and IT leaders need to take active steps to add this technology to their infrastructure.
Succeeding in the new normal
Adjusting to change and uncertainty quickly and with agility may be easier for those that are cloud native. However, ensuring long term business success will require continual adaptation and technological evolution – no matter whether your business operates with a hybrid or cloud native infrastructure. By using technology that can not only enhance visibility across the network, but also optimise application performance, businesses can maintain employee productivity, start to innovate and successfully thrive in a post pandemic world.
