Uncovering the Value of Real-Time and Historical Data to Transform the Digital Workplace

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by Lakeside Team

Anyone who has used GPS while driving knows the importance of real-time data. “Turn left onto Main Street” would be less helpful if you’ve already passed it by a quarter mile. Similarly, in IT, real-time awareness can help teams keep system performance on course for a great digital employee experience (DEX). Fast — and even proactive — responses to end-user IT issues continue to be enabled thanks to advances in analytics software, including real-time visibility. Consequently, there is growing interest among enterprise organizations in making use of real-time data to reduce system downtime and improve IT support.

Real-time data is game-changing. One could argue, however, that successful enterprise IT management requires a multifaceted approach to gathering and interpreting information. One of the key components of this is making use of real-time data alongside trending data. The latter provides context for the former. Understanding the broader trajectory of the end-user digital experience and system performance can greatly augment IT’s ability to get the insights they need to solve problems quickly. Sourcing data from the endpoint is also essential — close to the end-user experience — as continuous, granular collection of metrics on end users’ systems provides a direct line of sight into the actual end-user experience.

Consider the following situation: an end user is experiencing a laptop performance problem related to resources. In this case, perhaps they are running an application that’s fully consuming their CPU. From their perspective, the system is slow, and their experience is getting in the way of their productivity. This is where the split between trending information and real-time becomes critical.

Why? From an IT operational perspective, it’s much more ideal to get immediately notified of a problem (e.g., high CPU or poor end-user experience) rather than wait for the trend to demonstrate that over time. It can be just as important, however, to establish whether an end user is consistently experiencing the same kind of issues (based on historical trends). The real-time and historical data insights combined allow IT to establish an actual root cause and resolution. What’s optimal for unparalleled IT support is a combination of both methods to give the help desk a complete picture of the whole environment, collections of systems, and an individual system both operationally and over time.

Combining continuous real-time analytics with historical trends enables IT to perform both business and operational intelligence analysis within a single platform while focusing heavily on the end-user digital experience.


What are additional business observations from real-time and historical data?

Armed with real-time and historical data, IT teams can gain the following data insights;

  • • Visibility into issues such as high CPU consumption (which causes system degradation), memory, disk, and slow boot times. Data can trigger alarms based on predefined thresholds for any metric of interest.

  • • A snapshot of the overall health of the IT estate and the related end-user productivity impacts, highlighting where the greatest impacts within an environment are and, accordingly, the issues to prioritize and direct immediate remediation.

  • • An estate-wide view of boot and login times to identify problem areas proactively, thus preventing poor user experience and help desk ticket generation.

  • • Ways to maximize device health and security by identifying patching issues, poorly performing applications, and shadow IT, ensuring that endpoints are fully compliant with organizational policies

  • • Hidden cost-saving opportunities and ways to continually streamline IT operations, by gaining a clear understanding of what software is deployed and its usage over time. This view allows enterprises to rationalize software subscriptions based on actual need or recognize savings by reclaiming and reducing licenses.

  • • Opportunities for improved end-user experience and cost savings for the enterprise by providing a data-driven approach to device lifecycle processes and other strategic hardware activities.


Breadth, depth, and history of data

To uncover these data diamonds in the IT rough, breadth, depth, and history of data are also crucial. With a holistic view of data, IT support technicians and analysts can better determine which users may be having a poor digital experience, ways to remediate IT issues, areas where the environment is underperforming, impacts of the latest IT rollout on users, and so much more.

Want to learn more about how to put the power of SysTrack data to work for your IT organization?

Request a Lakeside SysTrack demo.