AppNeta’s Toronto Luncheon: Expert Panel Discusses Cloud Visibility Challenges

Last week, AppNeta hosted a professional luncheon and panel in Toronto, delving into the network‑management challenges emerging as cloud adoption accelerates across enterprises.

Moderated by our own Chief Customer Officer Adam Edwards, the panel featured John Menezes, President & CEO of Stratejm; Alfred Ng, Director of IT Infrastructure and Application Operations at LCBO; and Samer Adi, Head of Information Security and Internal Controls at Indigo.

While each panelist brought their own insights, the event’s real value came from the roughly two dozen tech leaders in attendance, who shared their unique journeys to the cloud and the solutions they’ve deployed.

Adam kicked off the session with a quick poll to gauge how far attendees felt their organizations had progressed in cloud migration and SaaS adoption. Approximately 70 % of participants reported that their user base consumes third‑party applications, and about half said their organizations rely on more than three business‑critical SaaS tools.

Alfred then delved deeper into the visibility gap. When asked how many participants felt they knew all the applications running on their networks, only one person raised their hand.

Pressed further, no one could confidently state they knew where the source code lives for every app or whether they had the infrastructure to support SaaS from the start.

This informal poll underscored a familiar challenge at AppNeta: as enterprises migrate to the cloud, network visibility erodes, making proactive monitoring essential before end‑user performance suffers.

The discussion highlighted that reliance on cloud and SaaS will only grow as organizations decentralize. Roughly 50 % of attendees manage networks spanning over 50 locations, 40 % oversee 500 remote offices, and 30 % support more than 1,000 sites.

While most participants were from financial institutions, the trend toward decentralization and cloud‑first strategies is widespread across sectors, with SaaS tools playing a pivotal role.

For example, 10 % of respondents were already re‑architecting remote connectivity to support decentralization and cloud migration—whether through Direct Internet Access or traditional MPLS. Meanwhile, 40 % are evaluating or actively moving toward SD‑WAN, a solution that improves network management but still leaves gaps in monitoring capabilities.

Adam’s final poll asked how many teams prioritize end‑user experience. Sixty percent raised their hands, underscoring the universal focus on user performance.

Regardless of industry—finance, retail, healthcare, or beyond—networks will face similar challenges as they evolve. Achieving comprehensive visibility across all network layers is crucial to ensure migrations and transformations truly enhance performance.