It seems every few months a new tool hits the market with a buzzword solution for monitoring end-user computing environments, namely digital experience monitoring. And it is that given the SaaS-ification of applications and OSs, the proliferation of more user-friendly practices like BYOD, and the outsourcing of business-critical IT functions, IT is having a visibility problem into what is being…
APM is commonly used to describe two different practices: application performance management and application performance monitoring. While seemingly almost identical, these terms mean—and can lead to—two different things. In short, application performance management is a subset of digital experience monitoring (DEM), while application performance monitoring has a narrower scope of a specific application’s functionality. Both involve identifying…
Last week, in a flurry of caffeine-induced inspiration, I started thinking about IT’s role in open-plan offices. I already knew that I wanted to communicate how need-based procurement—that is, using data to understand what end users need and acquiring technology to meet those needs—can alter employees’ engagement with their workspaces. When I started to dig…
Picture this: a father shows up at his daughter’s wedding, sick with a bad cold, walks up to the bride and says, “sorry I’m taking a sick day.” This was the premise of a pretty successful ad campaign by Vick’s showing how parents simply don’t take sick days. Similarly, neither does IT support. When business-critical resources underperform or flat out fail,…
Citrix Synergy 2018 is almost upon us and how to best create and manage a digital workspace is bound to inspire debate among IT pros. But the truth is, despite movement to the cloud and changing work styles and devices, the steps to digital workspace success remain constant. This post focuses on Citrix offerings, but…
Does confusion around Citrix licensing keep you up at night? Choosing the correct license for your environment can be both stressful and puzzling! Good news, you’re not alone! In fact, we published a post about this very topic four years ago, and it continues to be one of our most popular. Due to high demand,…
Citrix XenDesktop is a dedicated software solution for configuring virtual environments. While virtualization can apply to several areas, including the virtualization of servers, storage, as well as networks, XenDesktop is specifically designed for the configuration of virtual desktops. However, this is often confused with a similar virtualization software solution, Citrix XenApp. In this post, we…
Questions about how to assess data quality and transform end-user data into insights are among the first steps when considering rolling out a digital transformation initiative. Do we already collect the data we need? You may wonder. There are three basic questions you can follow up with to determine your organization’s data preparedness: Are you collecting…
At some point, many of us have either shamefully filed a ticket to a service desk with a problem or have been on the other side and worked to resolve tickets that have piled up out of nowhere. Sometimes we are both lucky to get a quick resolution (have you considered not leaving your laptop running for a year straight?) or sometimes it takes a little bit longer (RIP your motherboard). However, a consistent battle that IT at the service desk face with their users is reducing the time-to-resolution…
You may have heard the peculiar news recently covering world-renown astronaut, Scott Kelly’s, genes. Why all the chatter? It was believed that Kelly’s DNA was forever altered as a result of his time in space. And while that may not have been surprising to some, the story has a plot twist: Kelly has a twin brother who now has…
Collection from the Endpoint With so many aspects of enterprise computing being managed or hosted externally, Lakeside’s point of view that end-user experience is the most important metric in IT rings loud and clear. Why? Because now more than ever, not only is the endpoint one of the last resources that can be managed by enterprise IT but it is and has…
5 Best Practices for Proactive Monitoring Becoming proactive within the enterprise can be a challenging mountain to climb. As a past level 1 help desk employee, I can safely say that I wish proactive monitoring was something we took more seriously.Independent of the obvious benefits of a proactive approach to digital experience monitoring, if done properly, it can bring about numerous benefits to the support…