More than half (63%) of senior IT operations executives are dissatisfied with their Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions, and 75% are dissatisfied with their Business Service Monitoring (BSM) solutions, according to a new BlueStripe survey of Fortune 500 companies.
While reasons vary, a common theme is the inability of these tools to keep pace with the make-up of applications both in the data center and within public and hybrid cloud environments.
Top reasons for dissatisfaction with APM tools, according to the survey, include an inability to support all applications or track all application components; metrics that are too developer-centric; difficult tool integration; and the simple fact that the tools do not actually help IT solve problems.
The problems cited with BSM tools include manpower requirements to keep service models up to date; lack of root cause analysis; too many alerts; difficult integration with other tools; and limited alerting for service level issues.
The survey highlighted three key trends in IT Operations:
- Current IT Operations processes for application monitoring and problem solving are both ineffective and manpower intensive
- IT Operations leaders are dissatisfied with their current set of performance monitoring and management tools
- Enterprise companies are hesitant to move mission-critical transactional applications to the cloud until processes and tools become more effective
“As companies continue to incorporate new technologies into their applications, the inability of conventional APM and BSM tools to keep up is taking its toll on IT Operations,” said Chris Neal, BlueStripe co-founder and CEO. “We were surprised to learn that in 2013, 81 percent of companies still have more than a quarter of their application issues go un-resolved, even with APM and BSM tools.”
Additional results from the survey:
- 68% of respondents reported failing to identify at least 1 in 10 business impacting incidents before users did
- 36% of respondents reported learning about more than 25% of problems from end user complaints
- Only 8% of respondents have a monitoring framework that both aggregates alerts and provides appropriate application and service level context for interpreting and acting on those alerts
- 92% of of respondents either have fragmented monitoring, using separate tools, or basic integrated monitoring, which does not correlate alerts to service level issues
- 52% of respondents reported that the standard process for fixing outages is a bridge call - which in large organizations can involve more than 50 individuals
- Companies using bridge calls as the primary approach reported the lowest success rates, with only 14% solving outages quickly
- Companies that used smaller teams for problem solving reported a greater success rate, with 29% able to solve outages quickly
Survey results also indicated a sharp contrast in attitudes regarding virtualization and private cloud versus public and hybrid cloud deployments for critical applications. In last year’s (January 2012) survey, IT Operations executives indicated that they viewed virtualization and private cloud as “just another technology” to be managed within their application architecture. The 2013 results build on this, showing widespread adoption of virtualization and private cloud.
In contrast, attitudes toward public and hybrid cloud among large company IT operations executives were distinctly skeptical. Despite the rapid growth of public cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, large companies are explicitly avoiding critical application deployments using public and hybrid cloud, in part due to the limited ability of APM and BSM tools to monitor and manage new technologies.
About the Survey
BlueStripe Software surveyed senior IT Operations executives at 166 large US-based companies in early 2013.
The Latest
Broad proliferation of cloud infrastructure combined with continued support for remote workers is driving increased complexity and visibility challenges for network operations teams, according to new research conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Broadcom ...
New research from ServiceNow and ThoughtLab reveals that less than 30% of banks feel their transformation efforts are meeting evolving customer digital needs. Additionally, 52% say they must revamp their strategy to counter competition from outside the sector. Adapting to these challenges isn't just about staying competitive — it's about staying in business ...
Leaders in the financial services sector are bullish on AI, with 95% of business and IT decision makers saying that AI is a top C-Suite priority, and 96% of respondents believing it provides their business a competitive advantage, according to Riverbed's Global AI and Digital Experience Survey ...
SLOs have long been a staple for DevOps teams to monitor the health of their applications and infrastructure ... Now, as digital trends have shifted, more and more teams are looking to adapt this model for the mobile environment. This, however, is not without its challenges ...
Modernizing IT infrastructure has become essential for organizations striving to remain competitive. This modernization extends beyond merely upgrading hardware or software; it involves strategically leveraging new technologies like AI and cloud computing to enhance operational efficiency, increase data accessibility, and improve the end-user experience ...
AI sure grew fast in popularity, but are AI apps any good? ... If companies are going to keep integrating AI applications into their tech stack at the rate they are, then they need to be aware of AI's limitations. More importantly, they need to evolve their testing regiment ...
If you were lucky, you found out about the massive CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage last July by reading about it over coffee. Those less fortunate were awoken hours earlier by frantic calls from work ... Whether you were directly affected or not, there's an important lesson: all organizations should be conducting in-depth reviews of testing and change management ...
In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 11, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) ...
On average, only 48% of digital initiatives enterprise-wide meet or exceed their business outcome targets according to Gartner's annual global survey of CIOs and technology executives ...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping industries around the world. From optimizing business processes to unlocking new levels of innovation, AI is a critical driver of success for modern enterprises. As a result, business leaders — from DevOps engineers to CTOs — are under pressure to incorporate AI into their workflows to stay competitive. But the question isn't whether AI should be adopted — it's how ...
