NETSCOUT Research Finds 97% of Enterprises Experienced Major UCaaS-Related Outages in 2023

NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of performance management, cybersecurity, and DDoS protection solutions, today released research that analyzes the challenges IT teams face in monitoring and troubleshooting Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) tools as the need to support more Software as a Service (SaaS) applications grows.

One significant finding is that nearly all enterprises (97%) experienced at least one major UCaaS incident or outage in 2023, lasting at least a few hours and affecting broad functionality, with 64% of respondents estimating associated losses of at least $10,000 in sales and productivity. Forty-seven percent of enterprises with annual revenue over $10 billion estimated losses of $100,000 to one million dollars or more.

Additional findings include:

• Enterprises with remote sites like branch offices, warehouses, factories, satellite campuses, healthcare clinics, and retail locations are more heavily impacted by increased complexity, with more than 75% of help desk tickets requiring at least a few hours to resolve.
• AI features are important to IT decision-makers when selecting new UCaaS platforms, especially AI prioritization of messages by urgency, AI-editing for spelling/grammar, and AI-generated text summaries of voice messages/calls.
• 51% of enterprises experienced at least four major UCaaS-related outages in the past year.
• UCaaS platforms were responsible for most help desk tickets among 37% of those surveyed, with 55% of respondents stating that it typically takes their IT organization a few hours to resolve issues.
• UCaaS platforms represent a significant percentage of overall SaaS adoption, with most organizations (59%) now supporting at least six or more UCaaS tools and applications and 10 or more SaaS tools and applications.
• 76% of companies increased the number of SaaS tools and applications they used over the past year.

“When essential platforms experience widespread and persistent outages, the disruption interrupts critical business operations and can lead to substantial financial losses,” said Michael Szabados, chief operating officer, NETSCOUT. “As IT teams continue to face visibility issues, especially in large enterprises with multiple remote sites where in-person troubleshooting isn’t practical, they need independent monitoring solutions that simplify operations, quickly identify the root causes of performance problems, and limit the impact of expensive outages to keep employees online and the business running smoothly.”

Using NETSCOUT nGenius Enterprise Performance Management, IT organizations can standardize operations around a single platform, foster greater productivity, address remote site blind spots, and minimize time to resolution as issues arise.

Between January and February 2024, the survey was conducted among 300 IT decision-makers in the United States and Canada. Visit our website to download a PDF of the research findings or to learn more about our UCaaS solutions.

About NETSCOUT

NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. (NASDAQ: NTCT) protects the connected world from cyberattacks and performance and availability disruptions through its unique visibility platform and solutions powered by its pioneering deep packet inspection at scale technology. NETSCOUT serves the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, and public sector organizations. Learn more at www.netscout.com or follow @NETSCOUT on LinkedIn, X, or Facebook.

©2024 NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC. All rights reserved. NETSCOUT, the NETSCOUT logo, Guardians of the Connected World, Visibility Without Borders, Adaptive Service Intelligence, Arbor, ATLAS, Cyber Threat Horizon, InfiniStream, nGenius, nGeniusONE, Omnis, and TrueCall are registered trademarks or trademarks of NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, INC., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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