Survey Shows That Businesses Are Committed to Offi

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - May 25, 2017) -

Highlights

• Survey of over 200 enterprise IT executives and staff reveals network challenges associated with Microsoft Office 365 deployments.
• Despite more than two-thirds of respondents upgrading their firewalls, 69 percent still reported post-deployment latency.
• Seventy percent of organizations plan to implement branch office breakouts and bandwidth controls for direct and fast Internet connections to enhance network performance.
• Full report and recommendations available at Zscaler/TechValidate/O-365-survey . 

Zscaler, Inc., the leading cloud security company, today announced results of a survey, "Challenges and Opportunities in Enterprise Office 365 Deployments," conducted by independent research company TechValidate . The survey reveals the challenges many enterprises experience when deploying Office 365, as well as the steps they are taking to improve user experience.

Office 365 has converted the world's most popular business software suite into a cloud-delivered service with powerful new capabilities and productivity tools, and companies are flocking to take advantage of them. But many organizations are finding that its productivity gains are negated by poor user experience due to poor network performance, a byproduct of accessing a cloud application suite through a traditional hub-and-spoke network.

Such networks backhaul Internet-bound traffic over a wide area network (WAN) through a centralized security gateway before allowing the traffic to go to the open Internet. The shortcomings of this network configuration are compounded by Office 365, which opens 12-20 long-lasting Internet connections for each user, resulting in a slow and frustrating user experience.

The survey found that most organizations prepared for Office 365 deployments using traditional techniques such as upgrading their firewalls and increasing network bandwidth. Despite these upgrades, close to 70 percent of organizations reported post-deployment latency and bandwidth issues on a weekly basis, with over 30 percent experiencing problems daily.

Opportunities for Improving Office 365 Deployments

Microsoft states that Office 365 has been designed to be accessed securely and reliably via the Internet to any one of its many global data centers. Survey respondents confirmed seeing poor performance running Office 365 over their traditional hub-and-spoke network, and more than 70 percent said that they are now planning to implement a direct-to-Internet approach to ease the burden on the network and improve performance. They are also exploring technology to intelligently allocate bandwidth to ensure that critical applications have priority over personal or entertainment applications.

"Through their own experiences, organizations are finding out that they simply cannot run a cloud application of the magnitude of Office 365 on legacy architecture," said Punit Minocha, vice president of business development for Zscaler. "To fully leverage the power of Office 365, a majority of organizations are looking to transform their networks from traditional hub-and-spoke implementations to ones that securely access the Internet directly from branch offices."

Methodology Commissioned by Zscaler, Inc., the "Challenges and Opportunities in Enterprise Office 365 Deployments" survey was conducted by independent research company TechValidate. There were 205 respondents from enterprises (1,000 to 5,000 employees) and large enterprises ( > 5,000 employees) in the United States. TechValidate is a trusted third-party research organization that collects and validates information about their deployments. Learn more at www.techvalidate.com .

To read more about the survey findings and recommendations for a successful Office 365 deployment, visit www.zscaler.com .

About Zscaler Zscaler, Inc., the leading cloud security company, is revolutionizing Internet security with the industry's first Security as a Service Platform. As the most innovative firm in the $35 billion security market, Zscaler is used by more than 5,000 leading organizations, including 50 of the Fortune 500, protecting more than 15 million users worldwide against cyber-attacks and data breaches.

Zscaler is a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for Secure Web Gateways and delivers a safe and productive Internet experience for every user, from any device or location -- 100% in the cloud. Zscaler delivers unified, carrier-grade internet security, next generation firewall, web security, sandboxing/advanced persistent threat (APT) protection, data loss prevention, SSL inspection, traffic shaping, policy management and threat intelligence -- all without the need for on-premises hardware, appliances or software. To learn more, visit www.zscaler.com .

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