Users don’t want excuses when it comes to digital experiences. They expect their devices, apps, and services to work―period. And these experiences matter; when they don’t meet expectations, the success, reputation, and brand identity of every modern organization is at risk.
But as the scope of IT teams grows to encompass truly global area networks, consistently great experiences are harder than ever to achieve. In today’s hyper-distributed environment, it’s impossible to build and operate secure, reliable, digital experiences when teams are forced to work across multiple platforms with disparate tools and incompatible solutions. It’s a recipe for experience disaster.
Fortunately, there’s a path forward. With more intelligent, data-driven platforms that not only provide visibility across both owned and unowned infrastructure but also enforce security and access policy effectively for every user and continually work to optimize the performance of the network, IT teams can deliver on the promise of truly resilient infrastructure―and more resilient businesses.
What is digital resilience?
Over the past year, I’ve heard CIOs and CISOs alike discuss the criticality of digital resilience. Particularly in an environment where many IT leaders control less than half of their infrastructure (think direct internet connectivity, cloud platforms, SaaS, and remote workers using their own devices), it’s important to look at our infrastructure from a different perspective.
The power of this global area network comes with a cost: many more network hops across on-premises, service provider, internet, and cloud connections. With digital resilience, network admins can regain control of the experience as it traverses the parts of the network they own, as well as the parts they don’t.
That’s what digital resilience really means: ensuring security, reliability, and an always-great user experience―in the face of any disruption―across your organization’s entire digital footprint. Here’s a look at how three different Cisco customers are turning this challenge into an invaluable reality.
Redefining high-design retail
When the pandemic hit, home furnishings retailer Room & Board faced the ultimate interior design challenge. Because many customers were unwilling to shop in person, the company’s free, in-store design services needed a digital makeover—and quickly.
The solution was more than just a fresh coat of paint. Room & Board brought the wow factor back to their customers by creating a remote shopping experience as compelling as the real thing. Store associates now take customers on virtual tours of options using interactive tablets to showcase furnishings as they stroll through the showroom.
To get a better sense of how this experience really lands, Room & Board leans on Cisco ThousandEyes to gain full visibility across every network connection and every device. IT can now see traffic and application performance in domains beyond the company’s direct control that are vital to the smooth delivery of their virtual and 3D design services.
“Being able to monitor, understand, correlate, and track those experiences removes that uncertainty,” said Mark Rodrigue, Senior Network Engineer at Room & Board.
With AI-driven intelligence monitoring operations across 22 stores in 12 states, Mark and his team have truly reshaped their business―and their customers’ living spaces.
Taking a big bite out of network complexity and high overhead
IT management at Qdoba―a chain of 740 Mexican restaurants throughout the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico―had outsourced the company’s network to a third party. It was a complex and expensive mix of switches, firewalls, access points, and Wi-Fi controllers from multiple vendors that was difficult to manage and secure.
For Qdoba, that complexity put the business at risk. To serve staff and customers, they needed a more resilient, dependable network experience that paired with delicious Mexican food. The answer? A unified networking, security, and data platform centralized in a cloud-based solution―all managed by just two Qdoba IT admins.
Qdoba’s solution unifies networking and security solutions in a tightly integrated secure access service edge (SASE) solution managed on a single dashboard from Cisco. It allows consistent policy enforcement and automatic security measures wherever users and devices connect in Qdoba’s global area network. Admins get full visibility into client behavior, intelligent device profiling, and the ability to seamlessly and securely connect any user to any application in a zero-trust model.
Now, Qdoba IT can focus on the information coming from the platform faster and with fewer staff. Compared to the old, outsourced network, their digitally resilient network costs $300,000 less annually. They savor this savings along with their spiciest salsas!
Great experiences take off at multinational travel agency
With travel and booking information at everyone’s fingertips, the travel agency business has become incredibly competitive. Flight Centre Travel Group, serving clients in 26 countries, has had to be nimble and adaptable to survive. During the pandemic, when travel was curtailed, hundreds of office closures and 75% staffing cuts meant the company was even more dependent on technology to provide a great customer experience and remain competitive.
With a small IT team and a 37% lower budget, Flight Centre switched from on-premises apps to software as a service (SaaS) for lower overhead. For the first time, their business was reliant on the performance of apps beyond their own data center. The viability of the business was on the line.
“We have customers nowadays who can sit and counter-shop the agent in real time on their mobile phone using our competitors’ websites,” said Chris Locke, CIO. “So we need to … deliver high-performing applications because our consultants need to be able to answer questions quickly.”
Flight Centre IT chose Cisco ThousandEyes to assure a reliable, resilient network across multiple continents 24×7. From a centralized dashboard, administrators have a full view across the cloud application and network experience. This complete visibility into cloud apps and network services extends down to the individual devices connecting to them. With users around the world, IT can quickly ascertain whether the network or an app is causing an issue. Real-time triage efforts can be escalated to teams to troubleshoot and optimize digital experiences wherever they occur.
Since this first-class upgrade, the company’s mean time to resolution (MTTR) has dropped significantly. Issues are resolved in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. Flight Centre is riding a post-pandemic return to travel high with confidence in the ability of their resilient network to support great customer experiences that fuel their continued growth and expansion.
A roadmap for your digital resilience
Whether you’re navigating disruption to your business, ongoing security challenges, or changing customer and employee expectations (or potentially all three), you need a networking platform that can help you deliver this resilience across every part of your infrastructure. Assuring only the wireless network or the WAN simply won’t cut it anymore.
In each of the examples above, IT visionaries tackled the challenges of a global area network by addressing three needs:
- Complete visibility: Getting insight across every aspect of their digital infrastructure, owned and unowned.
- Built-in security: Ensuring that security is built into every touchpoint to the network, from your data to every connection.
- Simple, proactive, automated operations: Investing in the flexibility and agility to take the right action at the right time with confidence.
Through the Cisco Networking Cloud, we can help you deliver unfailing networking, security, and end-to-end observability across any network architecture and keep your experiences running at their best.
To learn more about the digital resilience
journey and get a taste of the power of the
Cisco Networking Cloud, read more about
Digital Experience Assurance (DXA)
I do tend to wonder about vendor lock-in here.