ManageEngine enhances Endpoint Central with proactive DEX tools

ManageEngine has added digital employee experience capabilities to Endpoint Central, its unified endpoint management and security platform.

The new digital employee experience (DEX) features are designed to help IT teams proactively address performance issues, aiming to reduce the need for user-submitted support tickets and to deliver a smoother employee experience across diverse workplace technology environments.

ManageEngine's move reflects the increasing dependency of employee productivity on digital tools. According to the 2024 Gartner Digital Worker Survey, around 90% of respondents believe that the technology provided by their organisations has enabled them to carry out their tasks efficiently. Despite this, common issues such as slow computer boot times or application crashes often remain unreported until they impede daily operations.

The situation, as highlighted by ManageEngine, is that traditional IT teams often detect user problems only when tickets are submitted, usually at a point when solving those problems becomes more time-consuming and costly.

Industry perspective

Hybrid work has made the digital experience a defining factor in employee productivity and retention. Buyers are seeking integrated visibility and automation that enable IT teams to transition from reactive support to proactive engagement.

This view was shared by Chirag Mehta, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, who outlined the pressures facing organisations to shift from reactive to proactive IT support in a hybrid work landscape.

DEX features explained

ManageEngine's DEX enhancements leverage existing telemetry and remediation capabilities within Endpoint Central, transforming raw device performance metrics into practical insights for IT teams. The platform now integrates monitoring, diagnostic, and automated remediation tools, aiming to remove the need for multiple standalone solutions and reduce workflow complexity.

The key features of the DEX update include:

• Experience monitoring and insights: Continuous device oversight for indicators like CPU spikes, high memory usage, and disk issues to flag early problems.
• Insights and root cause analysis: Correlates poor performance with potential causes - such as hardware failures or resource-heavy software - so IT teams can accelerate troubleshooting.
• Prioritised alerts and remediation workflows: Problems are ranked by severity, with remediation options available either via a built-in library of actions or through user-created automated workflows.
• Experience scoring and benchmarking: Device and application performance is scored, allowing IT to benchmark against standards and track progress on health and remediation over time.

With these functionalities, IT teams are expected to gain greater visibility and control, streamlining their ability to fix problems before they affect business operations.

Roadmap and vision

Our North Star is autonomous endpoint management delivered through a unified platform that proactively ensures all endpoints adhere to policies, maintain optimal performance, and remain secure - with IT intervention required only by exception. We have already consolidated management, security, and experience capabilities within our platform, and we continue to expand its scope with every release. DEX management is one of the core pillars that brings us closer to this vision.

Mathivanan Venkatachalam, Vice President at ManageEngine, stated this as the company's longer-term goal with the platform, highlighting ongoing efforts to expand features and integrate automation in endpoint management.

Future enhancements were outlined to include expanded predictive analytics, increased use of contextual AI in telemetry, greater automation for self-healing, and broader ecosystem integrations - aimed at adapting to changing workplace needs.

Availability

The DEX capabilities are offered as a separate SaaS product, DEX Manager Plus, or as an add-on for Endpoint Central, with immediate global availability for organisations of various sizes. Both solutions are designed to be compatible with different enterprise types, ranging from small businesses to global system integrators.

According to ManageEngine, Endpoint Central's platform already provides a single-agent solution capable of managing the full device lifecycle and integrating security functions like threat detection, attack surface management, and compliance. The company reports usage among over 25,000 enterprises worldwide. The DEX addition is positioned to further streamline IT operations and employee support.