TO GAIN COMPLETE ,

FULL-FIDELITY VISIBILITY OVER THE

NETWORK AND ACTIVITY ON IT , SMES MUST COLLECT AND RECORD DATA FROM ACROSS

THE VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE TO

BUILD A HOLISTIC VIEW OF THEIR ENTIRE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT .

Now , over a year into the pandemic , with fundamental changes to the customer and employee engagement looking set to persist , it is clear that the cloud will be increasingly important to businesses . This is especially true for SMEs for whom the costs , flexibility , scalability and ease of manageability benefits are significantly magnified . With this in mind , SMEs now need to ensure they have developed the IT infrastructure that will enable them to optimise the performance and security of cloud services .

Performance

Slow SaaS applications reduce workforce productivity and significantly impact an organisation ’ s ability to execute in this highly competitive economic climate . On the other hand , by improving the performance of critical SaaS applications , organisations can not only address present challenges , but also set themselves up for long-term success with the ability to rapidly accelerate time to market , increase competitiveness and drive revenue growth .

To ensure the performance of their SaaS applications , SMEs must turn to the new breed of SaaS acceleration solutions , such as the Riverbed SaaS Accelerator , which are purpose-built to facilitate fast , agile , secure delivery of SaaS applications to any user , anywhere . This ensures that even the most far-flung and mobile employees stay productive , and business continues . Such solutions can dramatically improve user experience and business outcomes by eliminating performance gaps and disruptions that interfere with an employee ’ s ability to stay connected and productive .

Visibility for security

To gain complete , full-fidelity visibility over the network and activity on it , SMEs must collect and record data from across the virtual enterprise to build a holistic view of their entire digital environment . Network Performance Monitoring ( NPM ) solutions – that are capable of gathering flows , packets and data from cloud VPCs , VDI endpoints , data centres and the traditional network border – are vital to this . Harnessing the power of intelligent analytics , these solutions create thresholds for ‘ normal ’ activity and proactively warn IT about outliers and suspicious looking activity . The data can also be manually analysed to identify and mitigate cybersecurity risks by helping with threat hunting , incident response and forensics .

For SMEs , the rapidly expanding cloud services market will continue to level the playing field . But these businesses should recognise that it doesn ’ t stop at having the right SaaS or collaboration solutions that work effectively . By embracing tools that not only enhance network visibility and performance but also maximise application performance , even small scale organisations can feel safe in the knowledge that they can maintain employee productivity and continue to innovate and grow .

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