The dark estate: Reclaiming productivity and millions

The modern workforce is more distributed and dependent on devices than ever before. In this hybrid work environment, digital employee experiences are siloed. IT teams are on the hook to ensure end-user productivity despite strained financial resources and the IT talent war.

Despite their technical expertise, IT service teams are limited in their ability to be in multiple locations at once. Distributed workforces further cause significant blind spots and open up businesses to vulnerabilities hiding in the dark estate. That’s where hidden issues live, yet IT teams can’t see them. The potential for unknown risks is nothing new in IT. So why should businesses care about the dark estate, especially now when IT departments are already burdened by lengthy lists of service requests, putting out fires, and keeping up with security challenges?

What is the dark estate, and why should you care?

The dark estate encompasses all areas of a complex IT environment that are not obvious and visible to IT teams. For example, poor device, network, or application performance issues often go unnoticed. This lack of visibility leads to costly inefficiencies, sub-par digital employee experience (DEX), and unresolved problems.

In its State of Organizations 2023 report, McKinsey found that 90 percent of organizations have turned to hybrid and remote work models. This shift has expanded the dark estate’s surface area, increasing new IT problems and exacerbating existing ones. And without the physical presence of IT teams at their service, employees become frustrated with glitches or problems affecting the tech they need to do their jobs.

Despite some return to office (RTO) efforts, many companies are showing no signs of slowing or scaling back on remote work. IT teams therefore must figure out ways to regain visibility for troubleshooting. Getting complete visibility across the IT estate starts by identifying areas most susceptible to lying in the shadows of the dark estate.

Unreported IT issues

You can’t fix what you can’t see, and for remote teams, this lack of visibility leads to unreported IT issues from employees. That is until these seemingly minor issues turn into bigger problems down the line. For example, if you’re rolling out a new application or driver that interacts with something else unexpectedly (e.g., a Chrome auto update), you need visibility before the unknown issues affect the end-user experience.

What’s more, employees often are unaware of IT issues or they choose to suffer in silence to avoid bothering IT teams and disrupting workflows. Even worse, some employees take matters into their own hands, believing they can resolve issues by restarting their devices or trying to fix problems themselves. That approach often creates bigger headaches for IT than the original issue.

Root cause analysis

Historical data and diagnostics are critical to unearthing issues across an IT estate. Gaining insight into usage, device performance, applications, resource consumption, connectivity, and real-time digital health allows IT personnel to quickly diagnose various incidents, often before employees are even aware of them. By implementing and automating resolutions, IT teams can accelerate incident resolution, prevent future incidents, allocate help desk resources effectively, and improve the digital employee experience in the process.

Wasted resources

If the latest phone models are indicative of anything, it’s that technology should be replaced often, right? This is a belief held by my own teenager... and many organizations! Updating or replacing hardware is a scheduled calendar event every three to five years. True, this traditional approach streamlines the process and avoids the effects of ageing hardware. But organizations can uncover cost saving opportunities by pushing these devices past their typical refresh periods.

When organizations refresh hardware and software without needing to, they lose time and money. To avoid this, IT teams should seize the opportunity of visibility of endpoints to conduct audits to determine if any software licenses are unused. IT teams can also look at a device's health, performance, and usage to decide whether or not it should be replaced. For example, after evaluating usage patterns and machine stresses, one global bank on a planned 7,000 laptops per year refresh cycle determined that only 600 laptops need replacing that year.

With endpoint data that provides insight into the digital employee experience, you can ask the device itself if it’s really ready to be replaced. What do I mean? Proactively collect and analyze health, performance, and usage data from individual devices. Then you can know without a doubt which devices have more life left or whether you can make simple fixes, like replacing the battery, instead of replacing the device. Businesses can adopt this need-based approach to procurement instead of relying on archaic, time-based refresh cycles. Not only does this new way of refreshing hardware save money, it also extends the life of hardware, sending less e-waste to landfills.

Based on this approach in conjunction with DEX data, I was able to work with another organisation to determine that of the 5,000 laptops in its annual refresh cycle, they could use ChromeBooks for 1,400 of the devices slated for replacement. This visibility revealed a savings opportunity of almost £1.2 million.

Automated systems can help create efficiency here by scanning devices and providing a health report that can save money on annual hardware updates. Without audits, IT teams cannot accurately measure device lifecycles or uncover unnecessary software licenses.

Disrupting the dark estate with data

Preparing for the unknown may seem daunting, but it’s possible with the right data. Illuminating the dark estate requires IT teams to shift from a reactive approach to a proactive one. This complete visibility is based on knowledge of existing problems and implementing advanced software capable of understanding the landscape to uncover the smartest fixes and yield the biggest savings.

Managing the dark estate starts by supporting distributed workforces and their overstretched, overworked IT support teams. When organizations focus on shining a light on the dark estate, they can prioritize successfully deploying new technology, running critical IT services, resolving issues, and improving end-user productivity with minimal IT personnel involvement.

Gaining a better view of the dark estate will enable organizations to avoid endpoint downtime and, hence, reduced employee productivity -- while fostering a reliable, secure, efficient digital work environment that is always connected.

Geoff Hixon is VP, Solutions Engineering, Lakeside Software. He joined Lakeside in 2010 and has since held various instrumental positions that have contributed significantly to driving workplace transformation initiatives for enterprises. As the Vice President of Solutions Engineering at Lakeside, Geoff exemplifies his commitment to maximizing IT capabilities. He leads a dynamic team focused on assisting clients in leveraging Lakeside's extensive data collection and cutting-edge tools to address critical IT challenges affecting employees, digital workplaces, and overall business outcomes.