Mobile devices and constant connectivity are no longer just conveniences—they’re reshaping the way we work, shop, and interact every day. Employees can now manage tasks from anywhere, while consumers expect seamless, instant experiences at every touchpoint. It’s no surprise, then, that enterprise mobility is projected to soar to a $300.9 billion market by 2030, as organizations race to stay competitive, reduce costs, and boost revenue in this always-on world.1
For the IT organizations tasked with supporting these mobile ecosystems, however, this new reality presents a range of challenges, from device issues and poor application performance to a lack of end-to-end network visibility. Perhaps the greatest obstacle is the reactive nature of support. More often than not, by the time an end user calls in a problem or submits a ticket, critical business operations have already been disrupted.
That’s why Cisco ThousandEyes is addressing this visibility gap with an exciting enhancement to ThousandEyes Endpoint Experience: a new Mobile Endpoint Agent for Android. Designed to run on a wide range of devices, including Zebra handheld scanners, tablets, and phones, Mobile Endpoint Agent enables the proactive insights needed to manage the performance of the mobile devices, networks, and applications that power an organization's business.
The Mobile Opportunity and Its Operational Hurdles
Across many industries, mobile technology is increasingly relied on to drive process improvements, enhance service quality, and establish competitive differentiation:
- Mobile barcode scanners transform inventory and asset management, enhancing accuracy and efficiency in supply chain and manufacturing operations.
- Mobile point-of-sale (POS) systems streamline transactions at sporting events, on flights and cruises, and in other diverse venues, making cashless payments faster and more convenient for everyone.
- Mobile apps on tablets and phones empower remote and hybrid workers, providing access to real-time communication, collaboration, CRM, ERP, and other essential business tools.
- Handheld scanners and tablets enable field service technicians, delivery drivers, and other “deskless” employees to deliver faster, more efficient customer service, from on-site repairs to final delivery.
Yet, for all their benefits, mobile-enabled applications come with unique complications. These issues typically fall into three main categories: the device itself, its network connectivity, and application performance.
Is it the device?
Mobile devices, especially those used constantly, can suffer from battery drain, CPU overload, lost connections, or other issues that disrupt workflows, sometimes requiring charging breaks or device swaps. In point-of-sale scenarios, for example, this can result in failed transactions, leading to lost sales and customer frustration. Managing large fleets of devices also presents challenges, from maintaining application compatibility and timely OS updates to identifying common issues across the fleet.
Is it the network?
Network issues can arise anywhere along the mobile delivery chain. For the end user, these problems—ranging from poor local Wi-Fi and overloaded cellular access to backend routing issues and congested backhaul links—can manifest as slow inventory lookups, failed payment authorizations, poor video call quality, and other disruptions that impact business operations.
Is it the application?
Poorly optimized mobile applications can be slow or crash frequently, causing data loss, user frustration, or interrupted schedules, and fostering the perception that the technology is unreliable. This challenge is exacerbated by the complexity of today’s applications, which are often built on microservices, distributed across cloud and container instances, and codependent on external applications. For example, poor API performance can hinder the ability to process payments, generate invoices, or print work orders on-site.
The Reactive Support Trap
Troubleshooting such a complex ecosystem can be daunting without the right solutions. Typically, issues are reported reactively by end users, leading to triage and escalations that ultimately disrupt operations even further. Determining the root cause is also rarely straightforward, prolonging resolution times and deepening business impact.
Closing the Mobile Visibility Gap With ThousandEyes
To fully reap the benefits of mobile-enabled applications, organizations must maintain consistent performance. Support teams must be able to proactively identify the source of an issue—whether it’s poor Wi-Fi, cellular network congestion, an Internet routing problem, an application server error, or a device malfunction. Without this deep visibility and the right capabilities, resolution is often delayed by finger-pointing and time-consuming escalations. This is where ThousandEyes Mobile Endpoint Experience comes in.
Mobile Endpoint Experience combines the power and capabilities of the ThousandEyes platform with the new ThousandEyes Mobile Endpoint Agent for Android, now available on Google Play.
This powerful pairing extends ThousandEyes Assurance to address mobile use case pain points across a wide range of industries, environments, and applications, helping IT to:
- Optimize customer-facing operations in retail, banking, and airports where handheld scanners are critical for transactions and service.
- Maintain operational continuity in demanding industries such as aviation, mining, manufacturing, and logistics that rely on specialized mobile workflows.
- Boost workforce productivity by monitoring essential business applications like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Webex by Cisco, and other custom apps on employee devices.
These rich capabilities enable a more proactive and targeted operational stance, helping support teams and users avoid drastic but often ineffective measures, such as rebooting devices or Wi-Fi access points, that may not resolve the underlying problem.
As part of the ThousandEyes platform, Mobile Endpoint Experience can also draw from powerful capabilities such as Internet Insights and application synthetics. This provides teams, from a single console, additional visibility and insights into difficult-to-pinpoint issues, such as global SaaS outages or disrupted API calls, that impact mobile application behavior.
Understand What the User Is Experiencing
The lightweight Mobile Endpoint Agent provides continuous, real-time visibility from the device itself. It monitors key network metrics, including Wi-Fi signal quality and cellular connectivity, while running synthetic ICMP or HTTP tests to critical application servers and backend systems. These tests run in the background to minimize drain on battery life and reduce disruptions to primary tasks while empowering IT to proactively identify issues like poor Wi-Fi coverage or mobile network degradation.
From Proactive Alerts to Rapid Resolution
Mobile Endpoint Experience allows IT to set performance thresholds for device and network KPIs like latency and packet loss. If a threshold is breached, an alert is triggered instantly, enabling teams to act, sometimes even before a user is impacted. For example, if latency spikes between a baggage system and a check-in device, IT is notified immediately, allowing them to resolve the issue and prevent passenger disruption. To further accelerate troubleshooting, these alerts can be integrated into ITSM platforms via customized webhooks.
All data is aggregated into ThousandEyes dashboards, where teams can correlate device, network, and application performance to quickly distinguish widespread outages from isolated incidents. From there, ThousandEyes’ network path visualization helps pinpoint the exact hop where performance degrades—whether at a Wi-Fi access point, a core router, or an ISP service—which can help reduce the amount of time and effort spent identifying and resolving issues.
Deploy and Manage at Scale
With support for Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions such as Meraki SM, SOTI, Omnissa’s Workspace One, and Microsoft Intune, the Mobile Endpoint Agent can be deployed and maintained across a fleet of devices, providing consistent monitoring coverage while reducing operational overhead.
Transform Mobile Operations, Enhance Mobile Experiences
Mobile Endpoint Experience delivers significant value by helping transform your IT staff from reactive problem-solvers into proactive digital experience managers. By providing correlated, near-real-time insights across device, network, and application performance, it helps teams reduce Mean Time to Identify (MTTI) and Resolution (MTTR). This proactive stance can help improve operational efficiency by reducing the need for disruptive manual diagnostics and automating device deployment.
With the goal being smoother operations for your business and a better experience for both employees and customers, Mobile Endpoint Experience can lead to increased customer satisfaction, fewer support cases, and a distinct competitive advantage.
Ready to transform your mobile operations? Get started with a free trial today.
1. Grand View Research, "Enterprise Mobility Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Component (Solution, Service), By Deployment (On-premise, Cloud), By Enterprise Size, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2030." (Published: August 2023)