What are the common challenges with Microsoft Teams performance?

Common challenges include: 1) Poor video quality and freezing during calls, 2) High latency causing delays in conversations, 3) Audio issues including echoes and dropouts, 4) Screen sharing problems and delays, 5) Inconsistent performance across different locations, 6) Bandwidth constraints affecting multiple participants, and 7) Difficulty supporting large meetings and webinars. These issues can significantly impact collaboration and productivity in distributed work environments.

How does Aryaka improve Microsoft Teams performance?

Aryaka improves Microsoft Teams performance through several techniques: 1) Application-aware routing that prioritizes Teams traffic, 2) Bandwidth optimization to allocate sufficient resources for video calls, 3) Latency reduction through optimized network paths, 4) Quality of Service mechanisms to maintain audio and video clarity, 5) Packet loss mitigation to prevent freezing and dropouts, and 6) Reliability enhancements to prevent connection issues. These techniques work together to deliver a superior Teams experience.

What are the key benefits of Teams optimization?

Key benefits include: 1) Up to 75% improvement in video quality and clarity, 2) 50% reduction in call disruptions and connection issues, 3) 40% lower latency for more natural conversations, 4) Enhanced screen sharing performance, 5) Support for larger meetings and webinars, 6) Consistent performance across all locations, 7) Improved user experience for remote participants, and 8) Reduced IT overhead for Teams support.

Can Teams optimization work with existing deployments?

Yes, Aryaka's Teams optimization is designed to work seamlessly with existing Microsoft Teams deployments without requiring changes to the Teams application or user workflows. Our optimization operates at the network level, transparently enhancing performance for all Teams meetings and collaboration features. Integration is non-disruptive and typically requires no client-side software installation.

How quickly can Teams optimization be deployed?

Aryaka can deploy Teams optimization rapidly, with initial performance improvements often realized within days of deployment. Our cloud-based solution requires minimal on-premises equipment, and our expert team handles all configuration and optimization. Full deployment including all global locations typically completes within 2-4 weeks, depending on the scope of the implementation.

What types of organizations benefit most from Teams optimization?

Organizations that benefit most include: 1) Enterprises with distributed teams across multiple locations, 2) Companies with significant remote workforces, 3) Global organizations with international Teams usage, 4) Educational institutions conducting online learning, 5) Healthcare providers using Teams for telemedicine, 6) Professional services firms with client Teams meetings, and 7) Any organization where Teams is a critical collaboration platform.

How does Aryaka ensure security for Teams communications?

Aryaka ensures security for Teams communications through multiple layers: 1) Encrypted connections across our global private network, 2) Integration with Teams' end-to-end encryption, 3) Secure network segmentation for Teams traffic, 4) Compliance with industry security standards, 5) Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments, and 6) Protection against network-based threats. Our solution enhances performance while maintaining the security integrity of Teams communications.

Improve Performance For Microsoft Teams| Solution Brief

2020 turned out to be the biggest year for Microsoft Teams adoption worldwide, as the chat-based collaboration suite clocked over 115 million daily active users. Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that 91 of the Fortune 100 companies select MS Teams as their preferred tool of choice. Needless to say, Teams has always delivered when it comes to providing a coherent and standardized collaboration and communication process to organizations of all sizes, across any industry.

But what makes MS Teams the go-to choice for global enterprises? Beyond a super intuitive user-interface, Teams’ essence lies within its integration capabilities with O365, putting productivity apps such as Word, Excel, and SharePoint at its users’ fingertips. The powerful plugins enable them to edit and share files, organize group meetings, set reminders, make calls, and access other cloud-based apps such as OneNote and OneDrive — all from a single
window.

A feature-rich collaboration platform making sure employees spend less time staying lost in emails and spend more time collaborating over work of any kind, whenever and wherever they are.

Traditional connectivity options to Microsoft Teams

Legacy Networks Killing the User Experience

Like any other cloud-hosted application, the network remains the most crucial and often the most downplayed element to application performance and inadvertently the end-user experience for MS Teams. Most enterprises today rely either on the public internet or MPLS to plug into their cloud-resources. So, what’s the problem with this approach?

MS Teams places unique demands on the network. It needs good bandwidth for synchronization with OneNote, software updates, file downloads, and a whole lot more. With so much traffic constantly going back and forth, standard firewalls may become a chokepoint and therefore slow down the traffic even more. It’s a vicious cycle that undermines productivity. But it’s not the design of the tool that is to be blamed. It’s the nature and modus operandi of the legacy networks and the public internet.

While the flexibility and lack of relative complexity make the internet a lucrative choice, the amount of consumer and enterprise traffic over it has quadrupled over the last few years and continues to grow. The end result? The middle-mile of the internet has become a hotbed for congestion and packet loss, which leads to sub-par performance of SaaS/UCaaS applications such as Teams.

Microsoft Teams connectivity with Aryaka virtual router

On the other hand, MPLS is not particularly a cloud-first technology. Businesses today need to stay agile in order to remain competitive. MPLS comes with lengthy deployment schedules (from three to six months, depending on your branch office locations), leaving you helpless while your employees grapple with severe application performance issues. Moreover, MPLS may also come with severe cost constraints in geographies like China and the Middle East.

Lastly, the traditional backhauling methodology does little to improve the application performance. Instead, it adds to the delay and latency. To combat this, you must invest in CapEx-intensive WAN optimization appliances on all sites and hire IT staff to monitor network performance.

Simplify Connectivity and Improve Performance for MS Teams

With Aryaka Unified SASE as a Service, users benefit from a cloud-first approach that ensures secure and seamless connectivity to Microsoft Teams. This solution allows users to access their Teams instances in 30 milliseconds or less, regardless of their location, ensuring optimal performance for global teams.

Users can choose any of the three methods to optimize their MS Teams application performance:

The VO Model

With Aryaka Unified SASE as a Service, a VO acts as a virtual router with a public IP address and Layer 4 stateful firewall capabilities. It provides an optimization container and multi-segment TCP architecture to reduce round trip time (RTT). Instead of relying on a physical router, it creates a virtual site to hand off traffic from the nearest point of presence (PoP) to the closest SaaS/UCaaS entry point.

Traffic from the source travels over an optimized, private middle-mile and lands at the PoP closest to the Teams instance. The VO mechanism replicates a virtually hosted public site on the PoP itself and performs Source Network Address Translation (SNAT), allowing private network traffic to traverse the internet and reach the Teams server efficiently.

This process mitigates middle-mile limitations and optimizes traffic flow, boosting SaaS application performance by up to 20x with minimal packet loss and performance degradation.

Connectivity with IPSec and Azure Express Route

Over IPSec

With Aryaka Unified SASE as a Service, our solution bypasses the public internet middle-mile and leverages a private, software-defined Layer 2 network. Through the strategic distribution of Points of Presence (PoPs), this private network ensures proximity within 1-8 milliseconds to Microsoft Teams instances worldwide, delivering enhanced connectivity and performance.

Our advanced optimization stack, integrated into a fully-meshed private global network, eliminates the need for businesses to maintain and manage complex appliances. This results in optimized performance for cloud-hosted applications, providing users with up to 40x faster Office 365/Teams performance.

Azure ExpressRoute

As an official Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute partner, Aryaka Unified SASE as a Service allows customers to select either a private connection or an IPsec VPN into their Office 365 cloud from the nearest Aryaka PoP. This ensures enterprises benefit from enhanced application performance by leveraging our private network infrastructure.

Microsoft Teams performance benefits

Unified SASE as a Service	Optimized Performance	Fast Deployment Globally	Multi-Layered Security
Single solution for global multi-cloud connectivity over a software defined Layer 2 core.	Up to 40x faster application performance	Deploy anywhere in the world in hours.	Defense in depth protection for edge, core and cloud.
End-to-end reliability SLAs with up to 99.999% uptime & 24x7x365 monitoring and support	Up to 98% bandwidth and data reduction for fast performance and a superior user experience	A global network of 40+ PoPs ensures that 95% of the world’s business population is within 30ms access to applications.	Dedicated private core network that secures, compartmentalizes, and supercharges the traffic.
Zero CapEX, subscription-based pricing	Any-to-any connectivity for all IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS applications	On-demand site and bandwidth changes.	Option for both network edge and cloud security including virtual firewall support.

About Aryaka Networks

Aryaka is the leader in delivering Unified SASE as a Service, a fully integrated solution combining networking, security, and observability. Built for the demands of Generative AI as well as today’s multi-cloud hybrid world, Aryaka enables enterprises to transform their secure networking to deliver uncompromised performance, agility, simplicity, and security. Aryaka’s flexible delivery options empower businesses to choose their preferred approach for implementation and management. Hundreds of global enterprises, including several in the Fortune 100, depend on Aryaka for their secure networking solutions. For more on Aryaka, please visit www.aryaka.com.