Legacy Networks Hamper Office 365 Performance, Says Zscaler Survey

Microsoft Office 365 has become perhaps the most popular cloud-based software suite, but many enterprises struggle to deploy it on their network.

A survey commissioned by Zscaler and conducted by TechValidate found that organizations’ “hub-and-spoke networks” prevent them from getting the user experience they want from Office 365.

The survey of 200 enterprise IT staff found that 69 percent of respondents encounter post-deployment latency with the suite on a weekly basis. For more than 30 percent, it was a daily problem.

At the same time, companies still want Microsoft’s solution. Punit Minocha, Zscaler’s vice president of business development, says there used to be a question of whether Office 365 or Google Apps win the day, but Minocha says that debate has ended.

“I can unequivocally tell you that the large enterprise is moving toward Office,” he told Channel Partners. “It’s that killer app that Microsoft has, and more and more enterprises are working toward embracing it.”

But legacy architecture cannot run cloud applications like Office 365, Minocha says. The legacy types of networks send traffic through a central security gateway in a very slow process for the Office 365 users.

“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,” he said.{ad}

And many companies are planning to make the necessary change. The survey found that 70 percent of the businesses are going to implement bandwidth controls and branch office breakouts. And in many cases they’re going to need channel partners to do that.

“These are the same folks that are now calling on these enterprises to sell them Office 365 licenses, to help them in the journey to deploy Office 365, and I think they can be the trusted adviser to their customer base to help them adopt these local breakouts and successfully deploy Office 365,” Minocha said.