Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) released its latest research report entitled, Public Cloud Comes of Age: Application Performance Management (APM) Strategies & Products for Production-Ready Cloud Ecosystems.

Based on research criteria defined by EMA research director, application management, Julie Craig, this new research focuses on the enterprise management implications of the wave of innovation engulfing today’s companies.

During the economic disaster that defined the years between 2008 and 2012, time stood still for many businesses. Licking the wounds inflicted by business reversals and decreases in revenues and stock prices, they survived by reducing costs, laying off staff, and drawing on existing cash.

Surprisingly, these same economic conditions proved to be a catalyst for technology vendors. During that time frame, many expressed optimism for the future and a driving need to prepare for the time when the economy would improve. As a result, companies in almost every vertical are now finding themselves riding the biggest wave of innovation the technology industry has ever produced.

IT organizations are seeking new ways to manage the fallout of this wave, which has introduced rapid and often unplanned changes into IT ecosystems. At the same time, modern applications are increasingly part of “Extended Enterprises” in which execution can traverse multiple locations and spheres of control, and integrate data from widely dispersed sources. Such applications are already spanning on-premise and cloud, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and social media platforms, often connected by a web of tools and custom code dubbed the “API Economy.”

“This research examines the implications of rapid technology evolution in IT environments already saturated with multiple dimensions of application complexity,” says Craig. "It assesses the tool sets, technology usage, and challenges of today’s real-world IT organizations as they prepare to support the Extended Enterprises of the future.”

Key findings include:

- “Incorporating new technologies into the existing ecosystem” is the top challenge cited by IT professionals as a whole, followed by skills gaps and the high cost of IT administration/support. ”Shadow IT,” despite being at the high end of the hype cycle, is near the bottom of IT’s list of concerns.

- Significant challenges persist in moving applications to the cloud – Both data and application migration are key issues, although lack of skills and “keeping track of what is hosted where” scored high on the list as well.

- The top challenges cited by development professionals are “software deployment” and “production support,” both of which require operational skills and are often considered to be operations tasks. It is becoming increasingly clear that development is spending too much time doing non-core work. This, in turn, can impact the speed with which development organizations can deliver business-differentiating new features and functions. As industry leading companies become increasingly adept at delivering on the Extended Enterprise, re-focusing development on value-add tasks may well prove to be the deciding factor between companies which can and cannot compete.