Digital Experience management a cornerstone of employees productivity in the age of cloud services and hybrid work

Mr. Gilles Huguenin had a rich career as a tech entrepreneur, specializing in cybersecurity and net- working. A few years after he graduated, he co-founded and managed Easynet, which eventually became a major business ISP, listed on the London Stock Exchange. Then he co-founded two other busi- nesses back-to-back, Cybersecurity Company Olfeo, and Network Performance Monitoring company Performance Vision in 2004.

In conversation with Prisila, Correspondent, Asia Business Outlook Magazine. Gilles Huguenin offers insights into the concept of Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) and discusses the advantages it offers to organizations. Additionally, he delves into the specialization in Digital Experience Monitoring/Management.

Benefits of DEM for Organizations: Understanding and Implications.

DEM stands for Digital Experience Management, and brings organisations the ability to monitor their network, including their SaaS, cloud and applications’ ecosystems, with a specific focus on detecting user experience anomalies and issues across the applications, digital services or technology solutions used by their teams. It is essentially a productivity tool that empowers organisations to provide consistent user experience to their employees, regardless of their location, internet connection or device, thus empowering them to do their best work, and optimizing the organisation’s operations and productivity.

Why is it relevant for organisations in this day and age?

Imagine an organisation with 10,000 employees distributed across different regions around the world. How do you ensure every single one of them has a great experience with every single application they use in their daily work, at all times, on any device and with any connectivity setup? And when you identify a user experience issue somewhere, how do you proactively fix the issue without heavy manual processes?

These considerations, added to the exponential growth in SaaS applications and cloud adoption, make it easy to see how this could become a headache and why we need ad-hoc tools to help organisations monitor and manage user experience across their network. Ultimately, it is all about productivity. If you empower everyone with an amazing user experience and at all times, it keeps productivity levels high.

Do you have any figures about DEM adoption levels to share? 

Last year, Gartner published its Market Guide for Digital Experience Monitoring, which states that “by 2026, at least 60% of infrastructure and operations leaders will use DEM to measure application, services, and endpoint performance from the user’s viewpoint, up from less than 20% in 2021.” I’ve also been in a prime position to witness organisation’s appetite for this kind of capabilities, and I can tell DEM has never been more relevant than now.

"One of the most crucial features for network teams is DEM's capacity to map out the whole network architecture in order to pinpoint bottlenecks in the context of the actual user experience"

How do you measure the success of DEM initiatives, and what kind of KPIs are being used?

There are different kinds of projects that spark an investment in DEM. Some common ones include migration or adoption of cloud, SaaS, or internet-based connectivity, like SD-WAN, for example. In the context of these transformations, DEM allows organizations to establish a baseline of user experience, network and application performance in the original environment. As the migration progresses the objective is to maintain or enhance performance for all users and business applications. This, plus ensuring projects are on time and risk is minimized, are typical ways to quantify the success of a DEM initiative. There are similar ways to prove the effectiveness of DEM in user experience optimization and employee productivity driven projects.

What functions are in charge of DEM within organisations? Who are your main points of contact?

There are two key positions who frequently require and use DEM in IT. The first are IT operations teams, who oversee the performance of the entire infrastructure, as well as the user experience of employees, SaaS providers, third-party partners, and applications. The other is network operations teams, who are responsible for managing end-to-end connection across a complex, hybrid internet from users to apps, clouds, and sites. One of the most crucial features for network teams is DEM's capacity to map out the whole network architecture in order to pinpoint bottlenecks in the context of the actual user experience.

How do you envision the future of the DEM unit and solutions within Netskope?

From a technical standpoint, our team will be in charge of Netskope's Proactive Digital Experience Management (P-DEM), with two priorities. First, continue to bring innovations to the "Management" aspect of Digital Experience Management. The second priority is to make detection and remediation even more proactive and automated than today.

The objective is for Proactive DEM to take charge of the user experience by proactively and systematically implementing policy-driven adjustments before users even become aware of potential issues. For instance, if a user encounters connectivity problems during a Zoom call due to their internet connection, the system's objective is to promptly inform the user and establish an SD-WAN tunnel via the Netskope Client, introducing an additional layer of connection optimization.