PERFORMANCE MATTERS: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF OFFICE 365 Plan a smooth transition, focus on the end-user experience, and manage ongoing service.
Executive summary Office 365 offers a robust and for most companies business-critical platform for managing work and increasing productivity. As a cloud-based suite of productivity applications, however, it is delivered over a complex web of networks to remote and mobile users who use a diverse mix of devices and operating systems. This complexity introduces many challenges related to the migration process, ongoing performance and service assurance. 50% We predict that, through 2019, more than half of all global-scale deployments of Microsoft Office 365 will experience network-related performance problems. Gartner, Network Design Best Practices for Office 365, August 2016 Your organization needs visibility across the network to reduce latency, properly size capacity and fix issues quickly. Gone are the days of pure Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks. Today, it s all about unifying, optimizing, and orchestrating app and service delivery across hybrid networks that include private business links and the public Internet. For a successful migration, broad user adoption and high ROI with SaaS apps, focus on providing a great end-user experience by increasing visibility and improving what you control. You also need to understand what your end users are experiencing through the app, and determine whether their experience differs from the cloud provider s SLA report for server uptime. By addressing these issues, you can help your company have a smooth and successful transition to Office 365. This E-book will guide you through the steps that lead to best-practice results. Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 2
Not all user experiences are created equal Office 365 offers many benefits: It facilitates communication and collaboration, supports the virtual office, ensures that users always have the most up-todate features and capabilities, and aids in business continuity and disaster recovery. The application performance experienced by end users, however, can vary significantly from one person to the next as well as between one app and another, although Microsoft is meeting its SLAs. This is because SaaS providers do not control what lies beyond the cloud. 89% of business executives say that poor app performance negatively impacts their business on a regular basis. 1 Factors affecting application performance include: Physical distance from the end user to the application server, which is typically longer with cloud-based apps than on-premises apps; Added distance in the network path when SaaS traffic is backhauled through an enterprise datacenter or via low-cost but indirect routes on the Internet; Bandwidth constraints that slow large file transfers associated with SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange; Health and performance of the end-user device. IT needs tools to monitor the experience of individual end users and to isolate the causes of performance problems between them and the cloud. 1 Riverbed Global Application Performance Survey, November 2015. Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 3
How can I ensure good user experiences when SLAs stop at the edge of the cloud? Do I have complete visibility from the end user to the cloud? WAN Why are my branch users experiencing greater delays? Can I optimize the network to improve performance and reduce costs? With complex infrastructures come new challenges Application-delivery infrastructures have become increasingly complex over the past five years, largely due to the rise of: Hybrid networking both private and public networks Hybrid apps both on-premises and in the cloud Remote connection points branch offices and mobile devices This complexity causes pain points for the business: Project delays due to hidden risks and constraints Difficulty identifying and troubleshooting performance issues Poor user experiences that impact productivity and slow cloud adoption Unplanned costs to upgrade networks to support SaaS traffic But businesses don t have to go through these pains. With the right solutions, you can get your company up and running on Office 365, and ensure that all users have great experiences. Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 4
Streamline your migration Solution #1: Planning and readiness You can take proactive steps before adopting Office 365 to ensure a smooth migration. Infrastructure assessment and capacity planning minimizes hidden risks or constraints that can lead to delays, unexpected costs and performance issues. Steps for planning and readiness include: Analyze current network design and capacity. Identify risks, constraints and cost trade-offs (e.g., Use an Internet break-out at a branch location or route traffic through a central data center?). Explore network upgrade options as needed (e.g., Time for SD-WAN?). Performance Profile: Sub-Zero/Wolf Sub-Zero manufactures and sells high-end appliances through plants and showrooms across the country. They depend on hundreds of applications. Six distributors had their own IT environments; performance and interfaces were inconsistent. This complexity impacted application performance and thus, the business. Erika Ferrell and her IT team deployed Riverbed solutions to accelerate cloud-based apps such as Office 365 and centralized an additional 350 apps on-premises. Riverbed also optimized the network, reducing transiting data by half. And it provides end-to-end network visibility for fast troubleshooting. The result: great performance for all users. We set this very high bar as far as application performance, and with Riverbed, we met it. I m confident that we re ahead of the curve, and that we ve set ourselves up nicely for the future. Learn more about how Sub-Zero/Wolf improved its Office 365 application performance. Erika Ferrell, Director of IT at Sub-Zero Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 5
Focus on the end-user experience Solution #2: Monitoring and improving the end-user experience Higher end-user satisfaction and productivity lead to higher adoption. Give end users the performance they re used to from their favorite apps. Steps for monitoring and improving app performance across hybrid networks include: Focus on the End User. Monitor application performance from the end-user perspective actually, from the perspective of many end users running several applications. Establish performance baselines with the on-premises versions of Microsoft applications before transitioning to the cloud-based Office 365 suite. Then do before-and-after comparisons. If the comparisons are not favorable, then it s time to roll up your sleeves and find the problems. Take a Holistic Approach to Troubleshooting. The usual suspects for SaaS performance issues are the cloud service provider and the network between cloud and end user. However, the problem could also be associated with the device type, operating system or web browser. The best way to troubleshoot performance issues is to use integrated tools that give you visibility all the way from end user to cloud. This eliminates guesswork and saves time. Improve What You Control. There is much you can do to improve what lies between the cloud and end users. SD-WAN can automatically select network paths and prioritize traffic by application, user or location. Riverbed also finds the shortest path across the Internet, and WAN optimization conserves bandwidth while reducing latency. Riverbed optimization delivers as much as 33 times faster file downloads and reduces data sent across links by up to 97% to SharePoint Online. Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 6
Manage ongoing service Solution #3: Ongoing service assurance Keep application performance levels and end-user satisfaction consistently high over time to drive operational efficiency and employee productivity. An application performance problem can be caused by an issue with the end-user device, in the SaaS provider cloud or somewhere on the network between. You need end-to-end visibility to find and fix them fast. Steps you can take to assure that ongoing service meets expectations include: Set internal service level objectives for app performance to augment SaaS provider SLAs. Measure performance from the perspective of all end users. Monitor applications, networks and devices in real time. Detect, troubleshoot and fix problems before they impact end-user productivity. If you are planning the move: If you have already deployed Office 365: Measure performance baselines for a diverse set of users and applications for comparison after the migration. Analyze how the move might impact performance and end-user response times. Prepare for migration with capacity planning and SLA analysis. Be proactive about upgrading networks to accommodate SaaS traffic. Identify how effectively end-user experiences are monitored. Understand and analyze complaints you have received about Office 365 performance. Gain clear understanding of current network utilization and performance bottlenecks. Assess how best to continuously optimize performance and end-user experiences. Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 7
Performance Profile: CenterPoint Properties CenterPoint Properties, which acquires, develops, and manages industrial property and transportation infrastructure, decided to transition its IT environment to the public cloud, starting with Microsoft Office 365 for email and office applications, Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Azure. But the SaaS apps performed sluggishly over the network, and employees couldn t get their work done a troubling situation for the fast-moving business. The company needed to accelerate slow SaaS apps to make its shaky cloud transition successful. I could show my boss a traffic summary report that showed SteelHead SaaS was reducing our Office 365 traffic by 63%. We had been getting a lot of calls about poor performance, and those stopped. And that was without any increase in bandwidth. Beverly Maestas, VP of Technology Operations at CenterPoint Properties Riverbed solutions ended performance complaints to the help desk by reducing Office 365 traffic by 63% to accelerate apps without increasing bandwidth, and by providing end-to-end, application-aware network visibility to find and fix problems more quickly. Learn more about how CenterPoint Properties improved its Office 365 application performance Performance Matters: Getting the Most Out of Office 365 8
You can ensure that your organization s transition to Office 365 achieves broad user adoption and a high ROI by planning for a smooth transition, focusing on the end-user experience, and managing ongoing service. Learn how Riverbed can help you maximize Office 365 performance: http://www.riverbed.com/office365 (415) 247-8800