Reliable, consistent access to business-critical cloud apps such as VoIP, video conferencing, ERP and CRM is vital to workforce productivity.

But as workers become more tech-savvy, they also become less willing to put up with even minor glitches in app performance, often bypassing IT to find the app they need to get the job done. By resorting to shadow IT, these power users overwhelm the network with apps your ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ firewalls, web filters and other tools aren’t configured to detect or control — eroding the functionality of sanctioned apps and leaving you powerless to meet growing performance demands.

To break the cycle, organizations need to shift away from set-it-and-forget it strategies and find more efficient, proactive ways to gain visibility and control of apps entering your network.

Rise in cloud-based apps causes IT headaches.

The use of the cloud and cloud-based apps continues to rise, with Gartner predicting 18% growth in 2017. In the same study, Gartner projects software-as-a-service increasing 20.1% to $46.3 billion in 2017. Looking ahead, IDC expects cloud spending to grow at 6-times the rate of IT spending from 2015 to 2020.

Today, popular cloud-based apps like MS Office 365 continue to experience rapid global adoption. In fact, Skype for Business and other MS Office productivity and collaboration apps like OneNote and OneDrive are huge drivers of cloud deployment.

But what happens when company-provided apps don’t perform up to par, and IT isn’t on top of the problem? Thanks to the cloud and BYOD, employees have access to any number of substitutes, such as Quip or Dropbox, and easy ways to circumvent IT when sanctioned apps don’t work as expected. All this does is further weaken the functionality of sanctioned apps, continuing the cycle of poor performance and creating more headaches for IT.

How to break the poor performance cycle.

In today’s cloud-centric, hyper-connected business world, set-and-forget approaches don’t work because workforce behavior and application traffic has become unpredictable. As soon as IT discovers and learns how to control one unsanctioned app, a new one arises to take its place. To stay on top of application use and employees’ online activities, organizations need three things:

1. Granular network and application visibility. Even working together, your firewall and web filter can’t detect and differentiate between all types of sanctioned and unsanctioned application traffic. You need layer 7 application visibility to accurately pinpoint traffic trends.
2. Policy-based shaping and control. A robust traffic prioritization engine will let you create policies that control how resources are allocated between users, applications, devices and locations.
3. Automatic application performance alerts. Don’t wait to hear about poor performance from end users. Choose a tool that provides insights on network traffic changes and helps you adjust policies to address them as soon as they’re detected.

A leader in the Wan Optimization space, Exinda offers end-to-end, web application management solutions to help organizations break the poor performance cycle. Contact Resilient for more info or to schedule a demo.