When we think of cloud adoption, we think of scalability, agility and performance. Despite increased adoption of SaaS, most IT teams have not addressed the fragmentation of the enterprise software stack. Modern applications are no longer a single executable running in one place, but a mix of on-premise, public cloud and hybrid applications & services that span in-house and cloud provider environments.
Enterprise users accustomed to LAN like speeds are underwhelmed, to say the least, when such complexity stands in the way of 
performance – a challenge further compounded by mobile device proliferation and global IT environment sprawl and mergers. While enterprises and their workforces look for big agility gains from the cloud, this complexity stands in the way.
Although IT may not be in control of SaaS applications, ultimately, the responsibility for ensuring anytime, anywhere access for an increasingly mobile and remote workforce falls on their shoulders. Particularly for enterprises leveraging the public cloud or MPLs networks – a foundational network architecture change is needed by the enterprise to solve the fragmentation challenge. Gartner and other analysts agree.
The High Performance Solution = (Speed + Proximity) – Complexity
If performance lags with SaaS solutions, even solutions from leading players like Office 365 or Dropbox running over AWS, there’s a good chance it’s not Microsoft or Amazon, but a combination of factors. Through strategic network transformation, IT organizations can focus on three key factors to increases SaaS performance to their enterprise: the network (speed), the distance between end users and the enterprise’s instance in the Office 365 or AWS cloud (proximity) and access (complexity).
1.) Reduce Complexity: Do you know where the cloud applications your enterprise leverages are hosted or how they’re being delivered outside your enterprise walls? To reduce complexity, become aware of how application instances, access points and network paths have been set up to deliver SaaS applications. As distance increases between application instances and the end user, combined with more hops and interconnects over the network, the more latency is introduced.
2.) Leverage Proximity: Geographic proximity to SaaS apps and egress points is key to application performance. In general, the closer cloud instances are to end users, the lower the network latency and the better the response time. Gartner estimates that reducing the distance between SaaS application servers and users can cut network latency by up to 50%. Ensuring the whole of your IT environment has the closest, less complex route to these access points can ultimately impact application response time and user experience.
3.) Super Charge Speed: Removing the latency and bandwidth limitations of your network figures prominently in the performance and reliability of SaaS, IaaS and hybrid cloud solutions. Today, IT organizations must invest in network architecture and planning that emphasizes low latency and removes bandwidth limitations without increasing costs. Otherwise, the enterprise faces poor user experience, unreliable data delivery, and overall declined performance when accessing SaaS, IaaS and hybrid cloud solutions.
