2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Tools

This recognition, in our view, affirms Riverbed’s strategy and relentless delivery of new products and capabilities. Our unified platform empowers global organizations to transform employee experiences, drive productivity, and build the intelligent, AI-powered workplace of the future. From mission-critical applications to frontline devices, Riverbed delivers high-performance digital experiences at scale — across every app, device, and network.

Why Digital Employee Experience Is Now Mission Critical

Today’s employees expect fast, seamless digital experiences — from any location, on any device, using any application. When performance lags, productivity drops, support tickets spike, and engagement suffers.

At the same time, IT and business leaders are under pressure to:

• Deliver proactive, scalable support
• Personalize experiences to employee roles and needs
• Feed GenAI and Agentic AI systems with clean, contextual telemetry
• Maximize the value of digital investments across apps, infrastructure, and devices

A strong DEX strategy is no longer optional — it is foundational to the AI-driven organization.

Riverbed Is a Leader Again 

Riverbed continues to excel by combining innovation, simplicity, and scale across the digital experience lifecycle — from data collection to intelligent automation.

In the past year, we have delivered powerful platform enhancements, including:

• Aternity Mobile: The industry’s first mobile-first DEX solution for iOS, Android, and ChromeOS visibility at scale
• Riverbed UC Module: End-to-end diagnostics for Teams, Zoom, WebEx, and Google Meet, covering VoIP, video, media, peripherals, and network
• IQ Assist: GenAI-powered insights and no-code automation embedded into IT workflows
• SmartOTel with OpenTelemetry: Context-rich telemetry that powers AI, observability, and business insights
• Deep integration with Intel: Visibility into Thunderbolt connected peripherals and Wi-Fi performance

Riverbed isn’t just measuring experience — we’re delivering AI-ready, enterprise-scale DEX across every touchpoint.

Looking Ahead: DEX in the GenAI and Agentic AI Era

As enterprises embrace GenAI and Agentic AI, real-time digital experience data becomes foundational. Intelligent agents and autonomous systems rely on precise, contextual insights to enable self-healing workflows, dynamic optimization, and predictive service delivery.

Riverbed is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. Our platform captures high-fidelity experience data across every touchpoint and converts it into actionable insights and intelligent automation.

With IQ Assist, Riverbed brings this vision to life — enabling GenAI-powered guidance and automated resolutions directly within IT workflows. By combining real-time diagnostics with AI-generated recommendations and no-code automation, IQ Assist empowers service desk and IT teams to resolve issues faster, reduce escalations, and adapt in real time.

The GenAI-powered workplace isn’t a future vision — it’s already here. And Riverbed is leading the way.

2x A Leader. One Unified Platform. Built for What’s Next.

We are honored to be recognized again as a Leader and are deeply grateful to our customers, partners, and employees for their continued trust and support. The future of work is here — and Riverbed is proud to be recognized as a Leader in Digital Employee Experience.

Download the full 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for DEX Tools report here.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Yet when connectivity falters or applications fail, the impact is immediate and widespread missed SLAs, operational delays, lost revenue, and rising frustration across teams. 

The real issue? Most organizations lack end-to-end visibility into mobile experience. App crashes, battery failures, and poor connectivity go unnoticed until they escalate. IT remains stuck in a reactive loop, addressing symptoms instead of preventing disruptions. 

It’s time to bring mobile to the forefront of your digital strategy and treat it with the same urgency and precision as any other business-critical system. 

Hidden mobile gaps that cost time and money

Mobile Gap 1: Unstable Connections. Delayed Operations. 

Frontline workers often operate in far-from-ideal network environments – deep in warehouses, remote job sites, or constantly in transit. When Wi-Fi drops or LTE signals weaken: 

• Technicians can’t access work orders or diagnostics. 
• Drivers miss routing updates and fall behind schedule. 
• Dispatchers lose real-time visibility into team locations. 

The Fix? Monitor mobile network conditions continuously to detect signal degradation, packet loss, and coverage gaps. Implement intelligent connection management to automatically shift devices to the strongest available network and minimize disruption. 

Mobile Gap 2: Crashing Apps. Broken Workflows. 

Mobile apps are the backbone of frontline execution – from routing and reporting to inventory management. But when they freeze or fail: 

• Deliveries are delayed. 
• Orders go unprocessed. 
• Frontline workers are left guessing. 

The Fix? Track app performance across devices and operating systems in real time. Identify whether issues originate from the app, device, or network- and resolve them quickly. Use predictive insights to anticipate and prevent crashes before they impact users. 

Mobile Gap 3: Battery Failures. Lost Productivity. 

A dead battery is more than an inconvenience – it’s a productivity killer. If devices die mid-shift: 

• Technicians scramble for chargers instead of closing tickets. 
• Hardware replacements spike, eating into IT budgets. 
• Morale drops as frustrations rise. 

The Fix? Continuously monitor battery health across the device fleet. Flag deteriorating batteries and high-drain apps early. Use these insights to inform proactive replacements and optimize device configurations for longer uptime. 

Mobile Gap 4: Reactive IT. Recurring Issues. 

Most IT teams only learn about mobile issues after the damage is done. This reactive model leads to: 

• Skyrocketing support volumes. 
• Extended downtime for users. 
• Repetitive, unresolved issues. 

The Fix? Enable real-time visibility into the full mobile experience – from app performance to device behavior to network connectivity. Shift from break-fix to proactive remediation using intelligent alerts and root cause insights. 

Closing the mobile visibility gap with Aternity

For organizations navigating the complexity of diverse mobile environments, Aternity Mobile Experience delivers the visibility needed to keep operations running smoothly. Supporting smartphones, tablets, rugged devices, kiosks, and POS systems, Aternity provides a unified view of performance across Android, iOS, and ChromeOS. 

With real-time visibility into app behavior, device health, and network performance, IT can resolve issues faster, boost productivity, improve customer service, and deliver better outcomes in the field.

Case study: How a national retailer transformed mobile performance

A major U.S. retailer operating 2,500+ locations saw its frontline teams struggle with constant Wi-Fi issues and unreliable devices. Operations slowed, and customer service suffered. 

The Challenges:

• Unstable connectivity caused order delays
• Device failures increased reliance on backup hardware
• IT lacked visibility and responded slowly to issues

How Aternity Mobile Helped:

• Optimized Wi-Fi configurations using real-time data
• Proactively replaced failing devices before issues were reported
• Provided end-to-end visibility for faster troubleshooting

The Result? Smoother workflows. Happier employees. And more satisfied customers at every location. 

Ready to take control of mobile performance?

Whether you lead field services, technical operations, or IT support, mobile performance is no longer optional—it’s mission-critical. Aternity Mobile Experience equips you with real-time visibility and intelligent automation to keep teams productive, customers happy, and IT ahead of the curve. 

With Aternity, you can detect and resolve mobile issues before they impact users, helping to maintain smooth operations and reduce downtime. Support ticket volumes decrease as recurring problems are eliminated, freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value work. Additionally, improved visibility into device usage and battery health extends the lifecycle of mobile assets and ensures smarter, more cost-effective mobile investments.

Explore how Aternity Mobile Experience can help your team stay productive—wherever work happens. Download our latest eBook, 5 Ways to Improve Digital Employee Experience with Aternity Mobile .

As organizations continue their digital transformation and embrace hybrid work, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) monitoring has become essential for ensuring secure, scalable, and cost-efficient remote access to applications and desktops. Without effective VDI monitoring, IT teams struggle to maintain performance, optimize resources, and meet user expectations in an increasingly complex digital workspace.

Despite its benefits, many VDI deployments still fail to deliver the seamless performance employees expect. IT teams often encounter slow logins, session lag, and application crashes, yet they lack the real-time visibility needed to diagnose and resolve these issues. The fundamental challenge? A lack of deep insights into the end-user experience. 

Why traditional VDI monitoring falls short

Many IT teams still rely on traditional, infrastructure-centric VDI monitoring tools to assess system health. These solutions primarily track server uptime, network bandwidth, and CPU utilization—important factors, but ones that fail to capture the real user experience. 

In multi-session VDI environments—where multiple users share the same virtual machine—pinpointing individual performance issues is especially difficult. When a user encounters lag or an application failure, is it due to the network, virtual desktop, app performance, or a broader misconfiguration? Without real-time, user-specific insights, IT teams are left guessing. The result: frustrated users, rising support costs, and reduced productivity.

The shift toward AI-powered VDI monitoring

To deliver high-performance digital experiences, organizations need monitoring that goes beyond infrastructure. AI-powered observability solutions offer real-time visibility into session health, application responsiveness, and network conditions—providing the full context needed to understand and resolve performance issues.

With AI-driven optimization, IT teams can detect and prevent performance slowdowns before they impact users. Intelligent automation can help dynamically balance session loads and allocate resources more effectively, reducing infrastructure costs while improving performance. Ultimately, the goal is to move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive performance management. 

Eliminate blind spots with Riverbed Aternity

This is where Riverbed Aternity comes in. Aternity delivers VDI intelligence and monitoring that eliminates blind spots and optimizes every session, ensuring a high-performance, frustration-free digital workspace. By providing real-time session visibility, AI-driven performance optimization, and proactive troubleshooting, Aternity empowers IT teams to: 

• Pinpoint user-specific issues in multi-session environments, including session lag, login delays, application failures, and network disruptions
• Automate session density balancing and resource allocation to reduce infrastructure costs and improve performance
• Prevent disruptions before they impact productivity, lowering IT workload and support costs
• Deliver end-to-end observability across endpoints, virtual desktops, and applications for a complete view of the digital experience

With Riverbed Aternity’s VDI intelligence, organizations no longer compromise between control and user experience. By bridging the visibility gap in VDI environments, IT teams can create a seamless digital workspace that enhances productivity, reduces downtime, and maximizes IT efficiency. 

For more information, visit our VDI Intelligence page.

What is DEM? 

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) focuses on detecting, analyzing, and optimizing the availability, performance, and quality of web-based applications. It enables IT teams to proactively identify issues, perform root cause analysis, and take corrective action before users are significantly impacted.

While DEM has traditionally been associated with monitoring customer-facing applications, it also extends to employee experience use cases, ensuring seamless digital service delivery across the organization.

Key features of DEM: 

• Real User Monitoring (RUM): Captures interactions and user journeys to detect performance issues. 
• Synthetic Transaction Monitoring (STM): Simulates user behavior to test and benchmark application performance. 
• Session Replay: Records user interactions for troubleshooting and usability analysis. 
• Root Cause Analysis & Actionable Insights: Uses AI and analytics to pinpoint issues and recommend fixes. 

DEM is widely used by IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams, software vendors, e-commerce businesses, and digital service providers who need deep visibility into user experience issues for web-based applications. For an e-commerce company, understanding where and why customers abandon their shopping journey is critical to maximizing revenue. DEM provides real-time visibility into the checkout process, identifying moments where customers drop off—whether due to slow load times, unresponsive pages, or friction in payment processing. Instead of reacting to lost sales, businesses can proactively optimize the user journey, ensuring every interaction is fast, seamless, and frustration-free. 

What is DEX? 

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) focuses on improving how employees interact with IT tools, services, and digital environments. It provides real-time visibility into endpoints, applications, and network performance while also capturing employee sentiment and automating issue resolution. By proactively addressing IT challenges, DEX minimizes disruptions, optimizes workflows, and enhances workplace efficiency.

DEX is widely adopted by IT service desks, digital workplace teams, and HR departments to support employee productivity and well-being. Unlike traditional IT monitoring, which often reacts to issues after they arise, DEX enables organizations to resolve problems before they impact employees, creating a more seamless and intuitive digital workplace.

Key features of DEX: 

• Comprehensive Monitoring: Tracks performance across endpoints, applications (Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux), virtualization (VDI/DaaS), web/SaaS/mobile apps, and unified communications. 
• Employee Sentiment Analysis: Collects real-time feedback on technology experiences through surveys and analytics. 
• Self-Healing & Automation: Uses automated scripts, workflows, and runbooks to resolve IT issues proactively, reducing downtime and manual intervention. 
• Personalized IT Engagement: Delivers targeted notifications, AI chatbots, and UC integrations to provide real-time support and guidance. 

In today’s hybrid work environment, employees depend on multiple applications, cloud services, and devices to stay productive. When issues arise—such as slow virtual desktops, lagging applications, or network disruptions—DEX instantly detects performance issues, automates resolutions, and notifies IT teams before employees are impacted. This shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive digital experience optimization ensures a seamless, efficient, and frustration-free work environment. 

Why organizations need both DEM & DEX

While DEM and DEX serve distinct purposes, many enterprises benefit from using them together. DEM ensures seamless application and network performance, while DEX provides deep visibility into employee interactions and IT service experiences. When combined, they create a proactive IT strategy that enhances both customer and employee experiences, leading to better business outcomes.

Riverbed: The only vendor recognized in both DEM & DEX Magic Quadrants

Riverbed is the only vendor recognized in both the Gartner Magic Quadrants for DEX and DEM, underscoring our unique ability to optimize both customer and employee experiences with a single, integrated platform.

Our platform stands apart by offering:

• Advanced DEM capabilities for deep monitoring of application performance, availability, and user experience.
• Comprehensive DEX insights that empower IT teams to enhance employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity.
• AI-powered analytics, automation, and remediation to proactively detect, predict, and resolve issues before they impact users.

By being recognized in both categories, Riverbed eliminates the need for organizations to choose between improving IT efficiency and delivering seamless user experiences—they get both in one powerful platform.

The future is unified: why siloed IT approaches no longer work

As digital transformation accelerates, organizations can no longer afford fragmented IT strategies. Every digital touchpoint—whether customer-facing applications, internal employee workflows, or network infrastructure—is interconnected. When one part of the digital experience fails, the entire business feels the impact, from lost productivity to decreased revenue and reduced customer satisfaction.

Riverbed is redefining digital experience management by eliminating blind spots and enabling proactive IT operations. Our AI-driven automation, predictive analytics, and deep observability transform IT from reactive problem-solving to an intelligent, self-healing ecosystem. By moving away from siloed tools toward a unified, AI-powered strategy, organizations can reduce downtime, optimize performance, and elevate both employee and customer experiences.

This is the future of IT—not just monitoring, but true digital experience intelligence. With no other vendor recognized in both Gartner Magic Quadrants for DEM and DEX, Riverbed is uniquely positioned to lead organizations into a new era of digital excellence. 

For more information, please visit Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience.

A cornerstone of this innovation is Riverbed IQ Assist, a powerful GenAI capability designed to accelerate issue resolution and enhance operational efficiency. By providing actionable insights, remediation recommendations, and workflow automation, IQ Assist transforms IT operations into a proactive and adaptive powerhouse. This isn’t just another feature—it’s a significant leap forward in how the Riverbed platform addresses IT challenges across endpoints, applications, and networks.

Aternity is the first Riverbed product to integrate IQ Assist, revolutionizing the digital employee experience (DEX). Embedded directly into the IT Service Desk Dashboard, IQ Assist empowers service desk teams with natural language inputs and AI-powered remediations. From entry-level technicians to seasoned experts, IQ Assist provides the tools needed for faster issue resolution and measurable outcomes.

What makes Riverbed IQ Assist stand out?

IQ Assist transforms IT operations by embedding AI-driven intelligence directly into workflows through a secure, private LLM designed for accuracy, efficiency, and automation. Unlike many GenAI solutions that require manual user prompts, IQ Assist proactively delivers contextual insights, diagnostics, and remediation recommendations—right where IT teams work. Powered by advanced observability data analysis, it enables IT teams to quickly identify anomalies and root causes across their entire IT landscape.

For many organizations, ITSM applications serve as the central hub for IT service desks. IQ Assist seamlessly integrates into these applications, starting with ServiceNow. With a single click inside an ITSM ticket, L1/L2 technicians instantly receive AI-driven analysis and root cause diagnostics—without switching contexts or manually correlating data across multiple tools.

What makes IQ Assist unique is its ability to do more than just respond to natural language queries—it anticipates what’s needed. By automatically analyzing key metrics, identifying patterns, and delivering prioritized remediation recommendations, IQ Assist eliminates guesswork. IT teams can simplify ticket creation, optimize routing, and accelerate resolution with no-code/low-code workflows that automate expert knowledge.

By eliminating manual effort, streamlining diagnostics, and automating follow-up actions, IQ Assist keeps IT teams agile, proactive, and ready to tackle complex challenges—faster and smarter than ever before.

Key capabilities of IQ Assist

IQ Assist enhances IT operations by providing AI-powered remediation, optimizing workflows, improving key performance metrics, and equipping service desk teams with actionable insights.

AI-powered remediation suggestions: Imagine describing an issue in plain language and receiving actionable recommendations in seconds. With IQ Assist, service desk technicians can input natural language descriptions of problems, receive prioritized remediation suggestions tailored to the issue, and understand each recommendation through clear, AI-generated explanations. This intuitive functionality simplifies decision-making, even for less experienced technicians, and ensures faster resolutions.

Optimized workflows for greater efficiency: IQ Assist removes the guesswork from troubleshooting by analyzing device attributes such as health events and recent software changes, flagging potential mismatches with organizational standards, and prioritizing remediation actions based on their impact and relevance. By streamlining workflows, IT teams can focus on what matters most—minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.

Accelerated performance metrics: Built to align with key service desk performance indicators, IQ Assist helps organizations reduce Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and improve First Call Resolution (FCR) rates. These improvements lead to faster issue resolution, better service delivery, and higher user satisfaction.

Empowering service desk teams of all skill levels: Whether a seasoned professional or a new hire, IQ Assist equips every team member with the insights and tools they need to excel. Generative AI ensures actionable guidance is always at their fingertips, enabling confident and effective problem-solving.

Fine-tuned for real-world impact: Riverbed IQ Assist is continuously optimized based on user feedback, ensuring the tool evolves alongside your team’s needs and delivers increasing value over time.

Starting the year strong with transformative enhancements: As organizations navigate the evolving digital workplace, service desk teams need advanced tools that drive efficiency, enhance employee experience, and proactively resolve issues before they impact productivity. In addition to the groundbreaking capabilities of IQ Assist, Aternity continues to lead with powerful enhancements that elevate IT operations and performance.

Proactive, data-driven insights for Microsoft Teams call quality

With virtual collaboration more critical than ever, IT teams need end-to-end visibility into Microsoft Teams performance. Aternity’s latest enhancements empower organizations to proactively detect, analyze, and resolve call quality issues—ensuring seamless communication and collaboration. 

Smarter performance monitoring: New cache size metrics and network synthetics (targeting Teams Edge Nodes and Teams Transport Relays) provide deeper insight into network conditions, helping IT teams pinpoint and eliminate performance bottlenecks. 

“Degraded Calls” insight: Proactively highlights users and devices most impacted by poor call quality, enabling targeted troubleshooting before productivity suffers. 

User-specific call analysis: Aternity now surfaces a comprehensive list of all calls attended by an individual user, including attendee count, duration, and time—making it easy to identify patterns and recurring issues.

Context-driven troubleshooting:

• Quick health snapshots via tooltips reveal other attendees’ experiences, helping IT determine whether an issue was isolated to a single user or widespread. 
• Drill-down call analytics provide a dedicated view of a specific call, offering in-depth performance stats across all participants. 
• Common factor detection, such as outdated audio drivers or network inconsistencies, simplifies root-cause analysis. 
• Business activity timelines surface key moments, like repeated user reconnections due to connectivity issues, helping IT teams quickly assess what went wrong and why. 

These enhancements give IT a powerful new lens into Microsoft Teams performance, allowing for faster problem resolution and a more seamless employee experience.

Simplifying Windows 11 readiness with Smart Insights 

Upgrading to Windows 11 is a critical step for many organizations—but not every device is ready. Aternity now includes a Windows 11 Readiness Checklist in the IT Service Desk dashboard, automatically flagging Windows 10 devices that meet upgrade criteria. 

This proactive visibility helps IT teams save troubleshooting time by avoiding unnecessary fixes on devices due for replacement and ensures a smooth migration by prioritizing upgrade-ready devices for Windows 11 deployment. 

These are just a few of the latest enhancements designed to reduce complexity, improve digital employee experience, and maximize operational efficiency. To explore the full list of Aternity’s newest capabilities, visit our product release page and stay ahead of the curve. 

Stay future-ready with Aternity 

This is just the beginning of how Aternity is revolutionizing the IT service desk. To fully leverage these innovations, it’s essential to stay on the latest version of Aternity through the Unified Agent. This ensures seamless updates, access to next-gen features, and the tools needed to drive exceptional IT performance.

By staying current, you position your organization to resolve issues faster, enhance user satisfaction, and remain agile in the face of ever-evolving IT challenges. Learn more about the Unified Agent and how it keeps your systems optimized.

Exclusive innovations with Aternity 12.2.5 

With this release, IT teams gain access to advanced tools and insights essential for managing today’s complex digital ecosystems. Key features include:

• Out-of-the-Box Monitoring for Microsoft New Outlook: Instantly track process resource consumption (CPU and memory) and business activities, optimizing performance and productivity for users of Microsoft’s latest Outlook version.
• ServiceNow Web Application Monitoring: Seamlessly monitor ServiceNow workflows in real time, resolve bottlenecks before they impact operations, and ensure uninterrupted productivity.
• Support for AppX Installed Applications: Simplify management and visibility for AppX-installed applications, empowering IT teams to maintain control across their app ecosystem.
• Simplified Business Application Creation: Automatically detect and monitor all processes used by an application’s root process.

These enhancements—and all future improvements—are exclusively available through the Unified Agent, making this transition essential for organizations looking to maintain a competitive edge.

Why choose the Unified Agent? 

The Unified Agent is more than a deployment tool—it’s a streamlined, scalable platform designed to simplify IT operations. By consolidating agents, enabling seamless updates, and reducing deployment complexity, it provides a robust foundation for the future of IT management.

Moreover, all future Aternity functionality, features, and enhancements—including new remediations, automations, and a sustainability package—will only be accessible through the Unified Agent. This ensures access to next-generation capabilities without disrupting your existing release processes, all at no additional cost.

Simple deployment, immediate benefits 

Upgrading to Aternity 12.2.5 is straightforward and efficient. Download the Unified Agent from your preferred tool or SaaS system, activate the Aternity module, and choose your update model—automatic or manual—for complete control. This streamlined process accelerates deployment while minimizing disruption, ensuring your organization is ready for the future.

The future of IT starts now  

Transform your digital experience strategy today by implementing the latest Aternity release and transitioning to the Unified Agent. With advanced capabilities and a simplified approach, your IT team will be ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

For more information, visit Riverbed Unified Agent.

A Visionary in DEM: Pioneering user experience monitoring

Gartner introduced the first-ever Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM). Riverbed was positioned as a Visionary, which is a testament to our strategic foresight and robust innovation in this evolving field.

DEM tools are essential for organizations aiming to monitor the performance and quality of their applications, particularly as they impact user experience. Unlike traditional customer experience analytics tools, Aternity takes a comprehensive approach, offering insights across both customer and employee experiences. This capability allows IT teams to rapidly address performance issues and optimize application delivery.

Furthermore, the incorporation of Aternity Mobile strengthens our DEM capabilities, allowing businesses to monitor the performance of mobile devices such as point-of-sale systems, kiosks, tablets, and rugged devices, which are increasingly important as mobile usage to better service customers continues to rise.

A Leader in DEX: Driving employee experience innovation

Riverbed was also recognized as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools (DEX).

DEX management tools measure and continuously improve the performance of and employee sentiment toward company-provided technology. As remote and hybrid work models become the norm, ensuring seamless digital experiences for employees is critical. Gartner forecasts that “by 2026, 50% of digital workplace leaders will have established a DEX strategy and tool, up from 30% in 2024.”

Aternity’s AI-powered insights and self-healing automations make it unique in the market. By collecting full-stack telemetry data from devices, networks, infrastructure, and applications, Aternity provides IT teams with the data they need to drive productivity and enhance the employee experience. Additionally, with Aternity Mobile, businesses can monitor frontline mobile devices and applications, addressing the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce.

Why we think dual recognition matters

Riverbed is positioned as the only vendor recognized in both the DEM and DEX Magic Quadrant reports. In our opinion, this makes us the only solution provider to cater to the full spectrum of digital experience—both customer-facing and employee-facing. Here are a few key reasons why we feel this dual recognition is significant:

• Comprehensive Coverage: Aternity provides businesses with the ability to monitor and optimize digital experiences across all endpoints—be it customer applications or employee devices.
• Enhanced Productivity: By ensuring smooth application performance and device usage, Aternity helps businesses reduce downtime, improve IT efficiency, and ultimately boost overall productivity.
• Future-Ready Innovation: Aternity’s focus on AI-driven insights and automation prepares organizations for the future of work, where both customer and employee experience are vital to success.

Aternity is the one-stop solution for Digital Experience

Riverbed Aternity is the go-to solution for enterprises looking to enhance both customer and employee digital experiences. As the only vendor recognized in both the DEM and DEX Magic Quadrant reports, we believe Riverbed can help organizations streamline their monitoring and optimization processes across the entire digital experience landscape. Whether it is managing performance issues in customer applications or ensuring employees have a seamless experience on their devices, Aternity delivers.

It’s time to elevate your digital experience! Read the full Gartner Digital Employee Experience Management Tools (DEX) 2024 Magic Quadrant today.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools, Dan Wilson, Tom Cipolla, Stuart Downes, Autumn Stanish, Lina Al Dana, 26 August 2024

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Monitoring, Padraig Byrne, Matt Crossley, DB Cummings, Martin Caren, Pankaj Prasad, 21 October 2024

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The new Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Tools (DEX) has been published and Riverbed is honored to be recognized as a Leader in the report.

Digital employee experience is crucial today and we believe this placement reflects our vision to transform employee experiences, while optimizing performance, increasing productivity, and maximizing investments in critical business applications and employee devices. 

Delivering exceptional digital experience is not about keeping up—it is about staying ahead. Gartner has recognized Riverbed based on its Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

Embracing the future of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) 

In today’s digital-first world, the importance of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) cannot be overstated. Organizations rely on technology to drive business outcomes, like AI (Artificial Intelligence), cloud solutions, and unified observability, to ensure a seamless, efficient, and positive digital experiences for employees. Our Riverbed Global DEX Survey shows 92% of IT leaders say unified observability is important for competitiveness and delivering a seamless DEX. 

Digital Employee Experience refers to the sum of all interactions an employee has with digital tools, applications, and platforms they use in their work environments as well as how they feel about their IT service. This includes everything from the responsiveness of their devices to the ease of accessing critical software applications, to overall performance and reliability of the IT infrastructure, as well as measuring employee sentiment through surveys.

According to our Global DEX Survey, business and IT leaders say investing in DEX is among their top priorities for the next five years, meaning DEX is no longer a luxury but a necessity. 

DEX is critical for the modern enterprise 

Productivity: Employees depend on digital tools to perform their jobs. This is especially true for frontline workers, who rely on these tools and mobile devices to engage with customers. Slow or unreliable technology can disrupt workflows, leading to delays. By investing in DEX, organizations can ensure that all employees have the tools they need to perform their best. 

Employee Satisfaction: A seamless and efficient digital experience contributes significantly to employee satisfaction. When employees can effortlessly navigate their digital environments, they are more likely to feel valued and supported by their organization. 

Attracting and Retaining Talent: In a competitive job market, offering superior experience can be a differentiator in attracting and retaining top talent. Modern employees expect their work environment to be technologically advanced and user-friendly.

Cost Efficiency: Addressing DEX issues proactivity can prevent larger IT problems, reducing downtime and support costs. A well-managed digital environment minimizes the need for extensive training and reduces the likelihood of errors. 

Business Continuity: In an increasingly remote and hybrid work world maintaining a high-quality DEX ensures business continuity. Employees must be able to access critical systems and applications from any location, at any time, without disruption. 

The role of Riverbed Aternity in enhancing DEX 

At Riverbed, our AI-automation driven platform places the end user at the center to optimize digital experience. Riverbed Aternity is the DEX component of the Riverbed platform, empowering organizations to resolve digital experiences swiftly & optimize costs by applying advanced ML & AI to the broadest range of telemetry across all IT domains. 

Aternity provides detailed insights into the performance of applications and devices, including mobile Android and iOS devices, from the end users’ perspective. This end-to-end visibility enables IT to identify and resolve performance issues before they impact employees, ensuring a seamless digital experience. We also measure the actual experience of every employee, and how they feel about their IT service with the actual application and device.

With Aternity, IT teams can proactivity detect and address potential problems before they escalate into major disruptions, ensuring employees can work without interruption and our AI-data driven analytics provide IT and business leaders with the data needed to make informed decisions about technology investments, resource allocation, and process improvements. Because Aternity measures the actual sentiment of employees, organizations can make strategic decisions to enhance DEX by understanding the impact of their digital tools on employee performance.

Aternity understands that investing in DEX is not just about enhancing technology, but creating a work environment where employees can thrive, innovate, and contribute to the organization’s success. With solutions like Aternity, organizations can make sure employees have a consistent and reliable digital experience, regardless of their location and ensure the full potential of their workforce

We invite you to download a complimentary copy of the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Tools (DEX) and see why we are evaluated among other DEX vendors.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

Global IT organizations are still recovering, and it could take weeks to fully recover. This incident underscores the critical importance of Observability and Digital Experience Management (DEM) solutions in today’s interconnected world. DEM solutions can provide immense value during global IT outages like the recent CrowdStrike incident.

Key benefits of DEM solutions during global IT outages

During an outage, clear communication with users is crucial. Organizations need to quickly detect and respond to issues to resolve the downtime and disruption. DEM solutions capture user interactions and performance metrics to allow organizations to keep users informed about service statuses and expected resolution times.

By offering insights into system performance and user behavior, DEM solutions help build more resilient IT infrastructures with comprehensive reporting enabling organizations to understand the impact of outages and improve future response strategies, providing valuable data for post-incident analysis and continuous improvement.

Riverbed Aternity: A vital tool for managing global outages

Riverbed Aternity is a prime example of a DEM solution that can be invaluable during global IT outages. The past few days, many customers have been using Aternity to gain visibility of the impact from the CrowdStrike incident, which has enabled organizations to take prescriptive actions to fix problems faster and mitigate this situation.

Aternity swiftly helped customers identify which applications and servers across the enterprise were affected and determined whether the issues were escalating or subsiding. This visibility let

IT teams quickly confirm which systems were back to normal, ensuring a smooth and efficient recovery process. Here are a few ways Aternity can help in these types of incidents:

1. Real-Time Monitoring: Aternity provides real-time monitoring of user experiences and application performance. This can help organizations quickly identify and diagnose issues affecting their systems and devices.
2. Incident Management: With its detailed analytics and insights, Aternity can assist IT teams in pinpointing the root causes of outages and performance degradation, enabling faster resolution.
3. User Experience Insights: By understanding how the outage impacts end-users, organizations can prioritize critical issues and ensure that essential services are restored first.
4. Proactive Alerts: Aternity’s proactive alerting system can notify IT teams of potential issues before they escalate, helping to mitigate the impact of the outage.
5. Comprehensive Reporting: Detailed reports and dashboards provide visibility into the performance and availability of applications and services, aiding in post-incident analysis and future prevention strategies.

Aternity ensures consistent performance, availability, and continuous operation, even during large-scale disruptions. These capabilities make Riverbed Aternity a powerful ally in managing and mitigating the effects of a widespread IT outage.

Aternity’s ability to track and monitor critical errors

By tracking and monitoring instances of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on Windows devices, Aternity helps IT teams identify and troubleshoot the root causes of these critical system errors, ensuring better stability and performance for end-users.

Aternity tracks BSOD events by monitoring the health and performance of Windows devices in real-time through the following process:

• Agent Installation: A small agent is installed on each monitored device, collecting data on system performance, application usage, and errors, including BSOD events.
• Event Logging: When a BSOD occurs, the agent logs the event details, such as the error code, timestamp, and relevant system information.
• Data Transmission: The collected data is sent to Aternity’s central server, where it is aggregated and analyzed.
• Dashboard and Alerts: IT teams can view BSOD events on Aternity’s dashboard, which provides visualizations and detailed reports. Alerts can also be configured to notify IT staff immediately when a BSOD occurs.
• Root Cause Analysis: Aternity helps identify patterns and potential root causes of BSOD events by correlating them with other system and application performance data.

This comprehensive approach allows IT teams to quickly identify and address the underlying issues causing BSODs, improving overall system stability and user experience.

Assisting with remediation during outages

For those already using Aternity, the impact of software upgrades, such as the CrowdStrike Sensor Platform and CrowdStrike Windows Sensor from version 7.14.18408.0 to 7.14.18410.0, can be closely monitored. IT teams can run remediation scripts to resolve issues, such as:

1. Booting Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment.
2. Navigating to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory.
3. Locating and deleting the file matching “C-00000291*.sys”.
4. Booting the host normally.

In conclusion, the recent CrowdStrike global outage has highlighted the critical importance of Digital Experience Management solutions. Solutions like Riverbed Aternity provide the real-time insights, proactive alerts, and comprehensive reporting needed to manage and mitigate the effects of widespread IT disruptions effectively. As organizations continue to recover, investing in robust DEM solutions will be key to building more resilient IT infrastructures and maintaining service continuity in the face of future challenges.

Given the popularity of Teams, Microsoft has significantly enhanced it with the rollout of Teams 2.0, now generally available. Teams 2.0 promises to be faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly than its predecessor. As organizations migrate to the latest version of Teams, the question arises: how do you ensure a successful rollout across potentially thousands of endpoints while maintaining service quality? The answer lies in AI-driven automation.

Riverbed is a leader in unified observability, and our Aternity solution provides intelligent automation and AI-driven insights into digital experiences for employees and customers across all endpoints and devices. The introduction of Aternity’s Intelligent Service Desk has been a gamechanger, enabling organizations to dramatically reduce service desk tickets and enhance employee satisfaction. In fact, these capabilities played a crucial role in Riverbed’s successful migration from Slack to Teams 2.0.

Below, let us explore our own use case. 

Embracing digital transformation with real world impact

Like many organizations today, Riverbed’s IT team faces increasing incident volumes and complexity. Coupled with a dispersed, multi-geographical, hybrid workforce, it becomes challenging for IT to schedule time to meet with employees.

Riverbed has adopted the strategic approach of a “shift-left service desk,” focusing on real people, real devices, and real-life scenarios. This strategy ensures the best employee experience during any digital transformation by empowering end users and allowing IT to focus on higher support tiers while eliminating mundane tasks.

Riverbed made the business decision to migrate to Microsoft Teams 2.0 based on its enhanced speed, efficiency, and user-friendliness. With a more streamlined migration experience, Riverbed aimed to make the user experience equally seamless. 

Riverbed Aternity Intelligent Service Desk provides AI-enabled detection, troubleshooting, and logic-driven remediation without human intervention. This puts the employee in the driver seat by allowing them to run their own remediation scripts. With this core capability, Riverbed was able to successfully auto detect any issues employees might be facing while undergoing the migration. 

Simplifying IT intervention with a step-by-step approach

Riverbed’s IT team has seen tremendous value in automating the discovery of issues, thereby preventing resource bottlenecks. The process is straightforward:

1. Identify which employees are experiencing issues with Teams 2.0.
2. Generate a pop-up alert for these employees.
3. Allow employees to execute a runbook script.

The most common issue with the migration to Teams 2.0 was the need to clear the Teams Cache, which could grow to several gigabytes. By identifying who was having an issue, Riverbed could automatically send a pop-up to suggest clearing the cache. If the user selected “yes,” the remediation would run to clear the cache and restart Teams—all within 20 seconds. This procedure was fine-tuned to avoid running if the employee was in an active Teams meeting, thereby enhancing the overall experience and minimizing disruptions.

To date, 63% of Riverbed employees who encountered an issue with Teams 2.0 successfully executed the remediation, leading to fewer IT tickets and less troubleshooting required by the user.

Microsoft provides a variety of management tools for Teams, including Call Analytics, Call Quality Dashboard, and more. With its integration to Teams, Aternity provides similar capabilities, but also enables IT to resolve other troubleshooting issues, such as those caused by anti-virus software, rogue processes, or by the performance of peripherals such as headsets. In addition, capabilities within Aternity—like automated remediation, employee sentiment, and DXI—apply equally to Teams as they do for any other business critical application. 

Aternity prioritizes Teams like a business-critical application—because it is!

This real-life example underscores the value that Riverbed Aternity brings to customers using the Microsoft 365 portfolio. The Aternity agent proactively identifies user experience and performance issues, reducing costs and improving service by empowering the user to decide when to run the remediation.

Common use cases include:

• Service Desk: Measure actual employee experience—do users experience issues across all apps, or just with Teams?
• End User Services: Reduce problem MTTR by correlating Teams call quality with the performance of the underlying device.
• Teams Owner: Gain cross-company insights—compare your Teams performance to the market to identify areas for improvement.
• IT Executives: Focus on continuous improvement—determine where to invest for the greatest impact by tailoring targets against market benchmarks.

Riverbed Aternity enhances Microsoft’s monitoring capabilities by providing actual employee experience for every application in the portfolio. Aternity monitors end user experience for every enterprise application on any physical, virtual, or mobile device.

Download the Aternity solution brief to learn more about how Digital Experience Management can rapidly troubleshoot and validate changes in Microsoft Office, Windows, and Teams.