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Quality of Service (QoS) is a standard metric for any infrastructure, networking, or operations team contracting with a tech vendor The average network SLA, for example, is crawling with QoS metrics covering a range of things, including packet loss, jitter, latency, bandwidth allocation, response time, and uptime. However it’s well known that the interdependence of technologies upon one another within the stack can make these QoS numbers completely unrelated to the actual experience among employees in consuming cloud applications. To use modern parlance, if we allow our users to “speak their truth” they will often tell of poor experiences despite all the evidence in our QoS metrics to the contrary. This is where Quality of Experience (QoE) comes into its own.
QoE refers to the overall user experience when using a cloud application, including performance, reliability, security, and usability. There is no shortage of examples of the ways in which a poor QoE can disrupt cloud adoption, and how – in turn – that disruption can cause fresh problems. Problems can include:
- Slow performance: When using cloud applications, users expect fast load times, minimal latency, and quick response times. However, if the QoE is poor, it can lead to slow performance, frustrating users and negatively impacting their productivity.
- User adoption: In addition to the direct impact on productivity for teams, a frustrating experience with an app or technology can also lead to users abandoning those that cause issues, sometimes selecting their own inferior alternatives. This can have significant implications for data protection and security, as well as wasting enterprise spend on the troublesome tech that has low adoption rates.
- Cost implications: Cloud adoption involves a significant investment in infrastructure, licences, and ongoing maintenance, and if the QoE is poor, it generally drives up those costs. It