IT teams have limited confidence in gaining application visibility, with over 34% of IT professionals expecting to see a shooting star before seeing real-time application activity, according to a survey by ExtraHop Networks.

The research, conducted among 200 IT professionals, highlights the lack of real-time application-level visibility that IT teams must contend with as they try to manage application performance. In the survey, over 25% of respondents stated they currently have no way of seeing their entire application delivery chain from end users to backend databases and storage.

“It is surprising to see how many IT professionals are blind to the application activity on their network,” says Owen Cole, VP EMEA, ExtraHop. “Businesses should be making the most of next-generation monitoring solutions to provide the real-time visibility needed to manage all applications. Without visibility, IT team are powerless to remediate problems and issues until after they occur. This reactive approach could cost thousands of pounds more than using next-generation solutions that help to proactively identify problems before they happen.”

Aside from the lack of visibility, the survey also highlights that IT departments are collectively wasting months every year fixing IT issues. More than a quarter (29%) of respondents have lost count of the amount of time they spend each month on troubleshooting issues, and 59% said that more than four people are involved in fixing these problems.

Cole concludes: “With so many IT professionals spending so much of their time fixing problems, there is a huge need for solutions that increase operational intelligence across the IT infrastructure. This improved visibility could massively reduce the man-hours spent on troubleshooting and help to increase the amount of time put into IT innovation to achieve a competitive advantage.”