"Explore strange new worlds – to boldly go…"

“where no IT admin or end user has gone before.” That quote borrowed from the popular Star Trek series accurately sets the stage for the release of the new baramundi Argus Experience module. It makes practical end user experience management tools available immediately to baramundi customers and partners.

In short

End user experience management (EUEM) is becoming increasingly important for IT admins because of the growing complexity of IT systems and more flexible working arrangements.
With baramundi Argus Experience (bEX), IT admins gain a powerful tool for recording and analyzing endpoint device stability and performance.
bEX enables IT admins to correlate end user feedback with objective data for early detection and correction of performance problems.
Clear dashboards provide proactive and objective assessment of results compared with other IT environments.

A combination of technology, workforce and practical developments in the past few years is making end user experience management (EUEM) an area of growing importance for IT admins. On the technical side, IT systems are becoming increasingly complex as computing environments shift from primarily on-premises to cloud-based and hybrid solutions. The locations where employees work have also become more flexible with a mix of in-office, home office, and on-the-road work arrangements. That means that IT must function smoothly no matter where users work. Employee expectations of system, software and network performance also have risen while their tolerance of IT-related disruptions, slowdowns and crashes is lower than ever.

Those factors set the stage for the new baramundi Argus Experience (bEX). bEX gives IT admins tools to record and analyze the stability and performance of network endpoints. What’s more, it will enable correlation of subjective end user feedback with objective endpoint performance data. The sheer utility of combining anecdotal reporting with performance metrics makes EUEM and bEX practical, powerful and “More than ‘nice to have’”.

What can Argus Experience do?

bEX gives IT admins data-driven insights to help them ensure that network endpoints run reliably and with better performance. That in turn enables users to work productively and without IT-related concerns. IT admins benefit because they can identify and solve a large number of problems before users notice and submit a "flood" of support tickets.

Sudden IT problems can occur without warning, of course. But many or most tend to announce themselves subtly over time. Argus Experience allows you to detect the symptoms of hardware, software or network problems early so you can analyze causes and initiate appropriate countermeasures with the baramundi Management Suite. That makes IT admins more efficient and productive and helps lower costs. It also gives IT staff the ability to do what they do best more effectively as the “IT heroes” they are.

A medical tricorder for endpoint devices

To use our Star Trek reference again, think of Argus Experience as a medical tricorder for diagnosing the recurring "little things" that lead to unhappy users. A typical example is lengthy boot times combined with frequent reboots. It can take a misbehaving PC several minutes until it’s ready for a user to start working in the morning. A need to reboot during working hours – often with the user under pressure from a critical deadline -- can turn that “little” thing into a much bigger one. With Argus Experience, IT admins can identify which end devices are conspicuously slow and implement a fix. It’s important to add that bEX does all of that in full compliance with data protection regulations.

Figure 1 - Overview of end devices with conspicuously long startup times

Frequent program crashes are another contributor to user frustration and reduced productivity. bEX lets you identify and analyze systems with unstable or outdated versions of software and spot patterns in the timing of crashes and slowdowns. Those often are the types of invaluable troubleshooting clues that help you find the most effective solution quickly.

Correlate subjective user feedback with objective data

Argus Experience also is helpful for spotting hardware problems. For example, aging notebook batteries can severely impair system performance. IT administrators can identify those and other hardware issues with Argus Experience.

Figure 2 - Analysis of charge cycles and charge capacity of used batteries

bEX not only enables you to align system performance with user feedback, but it also lets you contextually prioritize an appropriate response and resolution. For example, you could assign a lower priority to fixing program slowdowns or crashes that a user hasn’t noticed. On the other hand, you need to quickly analyze and fix a salesperson’s laptop that has a rapidly draining battery that’s interrupting sales presentations.

Argus Experience will help IT admins compile and analyze endpoint device data and user feedback to derive important findings and take meaningful actions.

Convenient dashboards for proactive IT management

Clear dashboards in Argus Experience provide a visualization of current and historical data from which trends can be identified. Administrators have a continuous big-picture overview of program hangs and crashes, long boot times, short battery runtimes and other problems so they can proactively address them. Anomalies can also be analyzed retrospectively and associated with specific support tickets. Clear scoring also enables an objective evaluation and benchmarking of the results against average values of other IT environments.

Figure 3 - Software crashes of all software versions in use at a glance

Exploring the strange and efficient new world of EUEM

Solutions such as baramundi Argus Experience fall under the term End User Experience Management (EUEM). Digital Experience Management (DEX) is often used as well. But they describe the same functions and features no matter in which jungle of abbreviations you find yourself. The point is, bEX is an important addition to an IT admin’s arsenal of tools that can help you boldly go beyond the confines of reactive problem-solving and into the strange and more efficient new world of proactive IT management and more productive end users.