CASA Software highlights impact, cost of network and app downtime

Tyron Silk, Solutions Architect, Pre-sales at CASA Software.

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A Gartner survey revealed that network downtime costs businesses an average of US$5 600 per minute – a staggering US$300 000 per hour. Another report by IHS Markit estimated poor network performance costs enterprises an average of US$1.55 million per year. This is according to CASA Software, which says this figure is continuously rising, with a later report from Ponemon Institute estimating the per minute cost at US$8 850.

“These figures are a staggering reflection of the cost of network downtime. Add to that longer-term damage to reputation and loss of customer loyalty, and you have a business nightmare in the making. Increasingly, network and application performance are business-critical issues, compounded by the move to remote and hybrid working models,” says Tyron Silk, Solutions Architect, Pre-sales at CASA Software.

“Today, the majority of apps, internal or external, are now cloud hosted. Moreover, users are highly reliant on public internet connections, which require additional security at the network edge. It is essential for enterprise IT departments to proactively track, manage and optimise performance, regardless of the apps or networks being used,” says Silk.

He notes organisations, driven by a range of benefits, continue to adopt cloud-based applications and networks, resulting in business-critical infrastructure and services continually moving outside of their IT departments' direct control. “However, despite this, enterprises still hold IT teams responsible for end-user experiences, even if they’re delivered over external infrastructures and third-party apps,” he adds.

Silk says it is essential for organisations to monitor network path and web application performance. “It is crucial to be able to pinpoint the source of network problems, determine how users are experiencing application performance and how network bandwidth is being utilised per application and per user. CASA delivers powerful tools capable of handling all these issues, while at the same time determining whether network and application service providers are meeting their service level agreements and plan for changes in capacity requirements.”

He confirms these tools are particularly useful if companies are using cloud-based applications or are running any part of their network across the internet. “What’s needed is visibility into the performance of the applications and the parts of the network you do not control. CASA enables delivery, experience and usage monitoring. Delivery monitoring enables the visualisation of network path performance while determining where problems are occurring. Experience monitoring provides visibility into application performance and user experience at any given location. Usage monitoring facilitates seeing how bandwidth at a given location is being devoted to particular applications, hosts and users. It monitors the traffic on a link to determine which applications are being used and who is using them. It also shows the amount of available bandwidth consumed by any given application or user.”

Applications drive business forward, but only if the networks they’re accessed through are available.

“Today, business apps and user productivity are dependent on external networks and third-party apps, but traditional passive monitoring relies on device and network ownership. To consistently deliver exceptional performance, IT needs better visibility into end-user experiences. What’s needed is a tool that bypasses the limitations of traditional passive monitoring providing active monitoring to extend visibility beyond firewalls. CASA delivers the means of combining these monitoring methods, enabling IT operations to fully understand how performance is affected by common issues like application outages, route changes, connectivity drops and ISP peering changes,” Silk notes.

The combined experience of CASA’s pre-sales and services engineers, dedicated specifically to this arena, adds up to over 100 years operating as ICT professionals. The wealth of solution design and build expertise of the team is unmatched, with certifications and experience integrating CASA solutions offerings into the customer environment, whether it be on-premises, hybrid, cloud or something in between.

“We provide and support the only network performance monitoring solution that delivers visibility into the end-user experience of any application, from any location, at any time. As a SaaS-based solution, IT and network ops teams at large, distributed enterprises can quickly pinpoint issues that affect network and business-critical cloud application performance, regardless of where they occur,” concludes Silk.