What Is End-User Experience Monitoring (EUEM)?
End-user experience monitoring (EUEM) is an element of digital experience monitoring (DEM) focused on end-user experience across apps, devices, and networks. With the growth of remote work and SaaS dependence, EUEM is increasingly critical to the success of a distributed workforce since small inefficiencies can have a significant impact on employee productivity and corporate security.
DEM/EUEM is commonly delivered as an add-on feature, but it should be integrated into a converged Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform. Otherwise, IT teams lack the visibility necessary to identify and promptly remediate potential issues associated with application performance and security.
Understanding End-User Experience Monitoring
EUEM focuses on the end-user’s experience with an application, device, network, or service. While generic monitoring may include the performance of applications and networks, EUEM captures performance metrics that directly affect the user experience. For example, latency is a key element of EUEM since application or network latency introduces lag and friction for the user.
IT teams need the visibility and metrics provided by EUEM to fulfill their roles effectively. Without EUEM, teams can struggle with blind spots and issues arising between IT, application, and network teams.
EUEM is especially critical in the context of hybrid and remote work environments or distributed workforces. Many business-critical SaaS apps used to support distributed teams – Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Zoom, etc. – are extremely sensitive to network latency and packet loss. EUEM offers the visibility and metrics required to identify, diagnose, and address any issues before they significantly impact the user experience.
Why End-User Experience Monitoring Matters
EUEM is designed to address potential issues with IT services that have a direct impact on the end user. Some of the potential business challenges that EUEM solves include:
- Downtime: EUEM provides insight into potential issues affecting the end user, including downtime. Rapid detection of outages enables the organization to quickly solve the issue, minimizing business impacts.
- Lost Productivity: Downtime and latency can negatively impact productivity as users wait for services to be restored or pages to load. Enhanced visibility and monitoring allow the company to resolve issues.
- Operational Efficiency: User frustration with apps leads to more IT tickets. Proactively identifying and addressing issues reduces ticket numbers and other potential business impacts.
- Revenue: Application, device, and network issues can impact revenue in various ways, such as decreased efficiency, lost sales due to downtime, and increased troubleshooting and maintenance.
- Morale and Security: Frustration with applications and inefficient processes may cause employees to quit or find workarounds. Reduced friction enhances morale and decreases the risk of Shadow IT.
EUEM focuses on monitoring and improving the end-user experience rather than abstract performance issues with unclear business impacts. With EUEM, CIOs and CISOs can better align IT performance with positive business outcomes.
Core Capabilities of End-User Experience Monitoring
EUEM is a set of capabilities designed to provide IT teams with comprehensive visibility into the end-user experience. Three key questions it answers include:
- Is the network fast enough?
- Are the apps behaving correctly?
- Where exactly is the problem if users are unhappy?
EUEM’s user-centric focus helps to improve business outcomes and is especially important in hybrid and SaaS-driven environments where IT teams don’t own and control all infrastructure. Key EUEM capabilities that they need to succeed in these environments include real-time performance tracking, root cause identification, and application usage visibility.
Comparing End-User Experience Monitoring Approaches
Real-Time Performance Tracking
Real-time performance tracking is critical in SaaS and cloud environments, where conditions can rapidly evolve. For example, a video call that is working perfectly one second may experience significant lag and choppiness soon after. EUEM solutions measure key metrics that can impact performance for the end user, including latency, jitter, packet loss, and application response times
Continuous monitoring ensures visibility into these features at all times, enabling it to catch periodic, short-lived disruptions. Additionally, with Cato, monitoring extends end-to-end across its private backbone, not just at the device or ISP level.
Root Cause Identification
EUEM helps to pinpoint the root cause of a particular issue, whether the device, local network, WAN, ISP, or SaaS provider. This helps to reduce the time and effort required to investigate and triage the issue and can avoid circular finger-pointing between various IT teams.
For example, users may be complaining that they can’t access a particular application. EUEM will be able to determine whether this is caused by an outage of the SaaS provider, ISP network congestion, misconfigured local DNS, or other issues. Cato SASE Cloud adds another layer of visibility, correlating EUEM insights with security events, which standalone solutions lack.
Application Usage Visibility
EUEM tracks how much employees actually use various applications. This can be useful for capacity planning, detection of shadow IT, and prioritizing support and upgrades. For example, an organization may find that employees are using personal cloud storage for sensitive company data, posing significant security and compliance risks. EUEM can both detect this and may aid in the identification of performance issues that drive this use of shadow IT.
Cato’s Approach to End-User Experience Monitoring
Cato integrates EUEM capabilities into its converged SASE platform. This provides comprehensive visibility and control across its entire private global backbone and distributed PoPs without the need to install additional agents.
Integrating this data into a single pane of glass enhances operational efficiency by reducing tool sprawl and licensing costs. Additionally, IT teams can more quickly investigate and resolve potential issues across networking and security functions.
Benefits of Embedded EUEM in Cato SASE
Frequently Asked Questions
How does end-user experience monitoring differ from traditional network monitoring?
End-user experience monitoring focuses on elements of performance that directly affect the end user, such as latency, responsiveness, and app availability, and maintains visibility across the entire path, including device, local network, WAN, ISP, and SaaS app. In contrast, traditional network monitoring focuses on devices rather than the user, looking at device health, uptime, and throughput.
Can EUEM work with SaaS and cloud apps?
Yes, EUEM is designed to enhance the performance of SaaS and cloud apps, especially latency-sensitive ones such as Microsoft 365, Zoom, and Salesforce. The visibility that EUEM provides enables IT teams to pinpoint the root cause of an issue, enabling faster resolution and improving business continuity.
How does Cato integrate EUEM into its SASE platform?
EUEM is integrated into Cato’s converged SASE platform with metrics collected directly via the Cato Cloud backbone and PoPs. This offers unified visibility across networking and security, reduced operational overhead and licensing, simplified troubleshooting, and no need for agents or separate tools.
Is EUEM equivalent to DEM (Digital Experience Monitoring)?
While the two terms are often treated as synonyms, EUEM is a subset of DEM focused on the end-user experience. DEM includes other elements as well, including synthetic monitoring, business process monitoring, and app performance monitoring. While both are valuable, EUEM offers greater insight into the user experience and business outcomes.
Who benefits most from end-user experience monitoring?
EUEM offers benefits across the enterprise and to end users. Some key beneficiaries include:
- IT Operations Teams: reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR).
- Security Teams: visibility into shadow IT usage.
- Business Leaders: improved employee productivity and satisfaction.
- End Users: better digital experiences and fewer disruptions.
End User Experience Monitoring with Cato Networks
As companies increasingly adopt distributed workforces and SaaS tools, they can struggle to identify and address issues before they have significant business impacts. EUEM offers insight into the network from the user’s perspective, allowing the company to reduce friction and proactively work to prevent downtime, latency, and other issues.
Cato SASE Cloud integrates EUEM into its converged cloud platform, offering enhanced visibility, performance, and usability when compared to standalone EUEM solutions. With Cato, companies can achieve simpler operations, faster troubleshooting, and better visibility by eliminating silos and taking advantage of solution integration and built-in threat intelligence.
See how Cato delivers EUEM as part of its cloud-native SASE platform. Request a demo today.