Secure access service edge (SASE), a category defined by Gartner in 2019, represents the blueprint of the networking and security architecture of the future. The SASE model consolidates many networking and security functions traditionally delivered in siloed point solutions–into a single, integrated cloud service. Many vendors have slapped the term SASE onto their current offerings without truly providing the upside of a SASE platform. IT leaders also have to take into consideration that deploying an infrastructure with SASE principles will not, on its own, ensure optimal performance and user experience. The challenge for many organizations is to identify which solution can truly meet their requirements.
SASE & ADEM
What you need is a solution that includes all the key components of SASE (SD-WAN, SWG, CASB, firewall-as-a-service, ZTNA 2.0) and also adds natively integrated user experience monitoring capabilities (Autonomous Digital Experience Management or ADEM). At Palo Alto Networks, we find that with a SASE approach, businesses can achieve a direct-to-cloud architecture without compromising security, performance, and user experience. The ability to monitor end-user experience with ADEM is a critical component of a SASE architecture that only Palo Alto Networks can provide without installing any additional software.
ESG, a leading IT analyst, research, and strategy firm, highlights three use cases in a recent whitepaper “Autonomous Digital Experience Management Yields Benefits Across the Organization” on how ADEM can add value to any enterprise
These use cases are based on customer examples of how enterprises can achieve real value with ADEM.
How ADEM can help
Using ADEM, you have segment-wise insights into exactly where the problem is across the entire service delivery chain, from the user to the app and everything in between. While a routing problem in a major cloud provider is not something an enterprise can repair, ADEM will alert operations teams to notify users that it has isolated a problem with a monitored SaaS application and that the app itself is experiencing performance issues or an outage.
According to ESG, during a SaaS-based social media platform outage, ADEM was able to identify the issue quickly and alert users within seconds of the problem occurring, mitigating user frustration and stemming the potential loss of productivity. For a business with over 2,000 employees, sending a simple alert email to users notifying them the application is down could save hundreds of hours of lost productivity. Support teams no longer waste countless hours manually checking on reported user issues, enabling IT to work on more value-added strategic initiatives.
How ADEM can help
With ADEM, you gain a complete picture of the end-user experience by measuring and monitoring directly from the user’s device. ADEM supplies detailed information on events that cause high CPU usage on a user’s device. For example, a user working at home using their home Wi-Fi may end up roaming (i.e. Wi-Fi signal travels to different areas of their house) or may hop between multiple Wi-Fi connections. As a result, the user may encounter low signal strength, which in turn negatively impacts their application experience. Another scenario might find a user performing an operating system upgrade, or perhaps an upgrade kicked in without the user’s knowledge. In either case, this event might result in high CPU usage. IT teams using ADEM would be able to observe that a user’s new OS software install/update resulted in high CPU usage, which in turn would negatively impact the performance of user applications [ ESG report]. This level of visibility can significantly reduce the amount of time needed to troubleshoot.
How ADEM can help
ADEM provides IT with the holistic view needed to monitor both remote users and the branch office with native integration into Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN, without having to install additional appliances or agents on user machines or in branch offices. The same dashboard that provides visualizations of an organization’s hybrid workforce delivers visibility for both remote and branch office workers. ADEM proactively measures the end-user experience of applications running in a branch and resolves problems before they impact multiple users. By running proactive synthetics on every WAN path, the administrator can recognize the best available and performing path, per application, for all users in a branch office. Without this ability, user experience can be significantly impacted by performance degradation.
The Value of ADEM
ADEM provides value across the organization, assisting both IT teams and end-users, from outages outside an organization to common user device problems. By monitoring and managing all domains of employee user experience, businesses achieve improvements in IT efficiency and employee satisfaction. The holistic visibility provided by ADEM further amplifies these results – helping you improve both IT and workforce productivity, reduce MTTR and ticket escalations and eliminate the barriers to visibility across your employee’s experience, wherever they work from.
Learn more about ADEM in our upcoming webinar on July 13th with Palo Alto Networks Ankur Bhasin, Director of Product Management, and guest speaker Bob Laliberte, Sr. Analyst from ESG.