5 Secrets to Make Microsoft Applications Faster

Microsoft Office 365 is the number one deployed application in enterprises today, ahead of Salesforce and Google Apps for Work. With the ability to access essential communication and collaboration tools anytime and anywhere, there is no denying the benefits of Microsoft business apps to an organization. However, with great power comes great responsibility.

When vital enterprise software is performing poorly, complaints about long file transfers, dropped web conference calls and not being able to access key documents, flood the IT help desk, halting employee productivity and ultimately costing the organization money. The challenge with these applications is that they are only as good as the network they run on. Without sufficient network bandwidth, your productivity applications become useless.

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In this blog we will discuss 5 secrets to help you make Microsoft applications faster and guarantee the reliable and predictable performance your employees expect.

1.    Understand Traffic Flow

Whether it’s online meetings, syncing files or collaborating on social feeds, you need insight into how each application is affecting your network resources. Identify the employees who frequently use Skype for Business, which offices employ SharePoint and what time large files are being backed up. Understanding these activities across all users, devices and locations is the quickest way to gauge the health of your network and troubleshoot problems.

2.    Create an Intelligent Policy

Unfortunately bandwidth doesn’t grow on trees. To guarantee enterprise applications have the network resources they need to perform, you need to set smart policies that prioritize critical traffic. For instance, set a policy that guarantees sufficient bandwidth for your CEO’s web conference or ensures employees have access to online communities and groups, but never at the expense of other business applications. Creating an intelligent policy will allow you to not only protect your applications, but also contain all unwanted traffic that typically drains network resources.

3.    Accelerate!

Often you’ll hear employees complain about slow SharePoint data transfers or files not syncing between branch offices. While acceleration may not be the answer for voice and video, applications for file sharing, storage, and backup rely heavily on acceleration techniques to perform well. If you want to guarantee that your employees experience reliable and lightning fast performance, you must accelerate delivery of these applications across the entire enterprise.

4.    Time-shift Your Network

Does your organization have regularly scheduled web conferences? Is SharePoint or OneDrive for Business being used at defined times? Analyze the applications in use and the nature of the traffic they generate to identify whether key apps that are competing for scarce network resources would benefit from scheduling changes. For instance, strategically time file sharing and reduce the amount of data transfers during business hours to eliminate network latency and ensure key apps are always fast.

5.    Control Recreational Traffic

Often what is impacting the performance of enterprise applications are rogue Internet users streaming music and videos during business hours. Learning how to identify and monitor recreational traffic and control users will help you avoid network congestion and ensure your business critical applications have the bandwidth they need.

You have made significant investments in Microsoft business apps with the promise they would improve productivity and drive business success. It’s time to take control of your network and reclaim bandwidth for all your strategic applications. By monitoring, prioritizing and accelerating business critical apps you can guarantee critical enterprise applications will perform when employees and customers need them most.

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