The IT impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been massive. People are relying, more than ever before, on applications to get work done and keep business running.  And increasingly, they're relying on their ability to use those applications ubiquitously. As the workforce and learning transitioned from on-campus to online environments cloud performance became even more critical to the remote-work experience.

Proliferation of end-user devices along with IoT as well as network speed evolution, as  noted in our inaugural Cisco Annual Internet Report, are all driving enterprise adoption of  multicloud strategies,

Public peering exchange data has shown an increase in internet and cloud traffic in the range of 10 percent to 20 percent globally, in the first ten weeks of the year. In its latest Global Interconnection Index report (GXI, Volume 4), Equinix finds the demands for interconnect bandwidth (i.e., direct and private traffic exchange) across businesses were accelerated by pandemic. And it predicts this growth will continue even as the overall economy slows down.

Cisco's own solutions have also provided a treasure trove of data that show growing reliance on cloud networks.  Cisco's AppDynamics, a powerful AI/ML powered platform for critical application performance monitoring, has shown that a number of applications are being hosted and supported by cloud and multicloud environments.

According to ThousandEyes' Internet Performance Report 2020: COVID-19 Impact Edition, ISP and cloud provider networks both experienced sharp increases in network disruptions (63 percent globally) between March and July 2020. The increased usage of the internet and cloud networks during the pandemic has made them essentially an extension of the enterprise core. This has raised unknowns for enterprises wanting to securely expand into multicloud environments. To quote the ThousandEyes report, the ongoing support of a remote workforce makes the internet "increasingly the 'x-factor' for employee productivity and business continuity."

IT teams need to have insights into the performance of not only their own networks but also that of both the Internet as well as the cloud. With this visibility, they can manage the end user experience and optimize application performance - even on infrastructure, networks, and services they do not own or control.

Learn more: Cisco Annual Internet Report, Internet Performance Report 2020: COVID-19 Impact Edition.

Visit Part 1 in the series from Shruit Jain: Visibility and Insights = Optimal Customer Experience.