While VMware presents many opportunities for organizations of all sizes, it is not without its own challenges. As more companies begin to adopt this technology, IT pros are tasked to protect and ensure the efficiency of their business-critical applications that live in these virtual environments. A recent survey conducted by SIOS Technology aimed to understand the challenges IT teams of small and medium enterprises. The results of the survey showed that IT teams are struggling to optimize VMware infrastructures, experiencing issues around managing multiple tools and resolving issues quickly and with accuracy.

IT Teams Use Multiple Tools to Identify Problems in VMware Environments

Of the 518 IT pros surveyed, 78 percent indicated they are using multiple tools — including application monitoring, reporting, and infrastructure analytics solutions — to identify the root cause of application performance issues in VMware. This method of uncovering issues in silos isn't sustainable for IT pros who are under pressure to quickly identify and resolve issues. Whether it's a small team that has to bounce between multiple IT-related tasks in a day, or a larger team that has to come together to communicate and understand issues, having to review metrics from multiple tools is proving to be ineffective. To increase efficiencies in managing virtual environments, IT teams should seek solutions that provide a holistic view of their virtual environment.

Guesswork Involved in Resolving Application Performance Issues

The results of the survey indicated that uncovering the root cause of performance issues remains a mystery to IT teams. Of those surveyed, only 20 percent of IT pros stated that they believe their strategy to resolve application performance issues in VMware are 100 percent accurate. Furthermore, 7 percent of respondents would categorize the strategies used to identify and resolve issues as an "educated guess." Across the board, it's rare for IT teams to have confidence around their approaches to resolving application performance issues in virtual infrastructures.

IT Teams Waste Time and Resources When Solving Application Performance Issues

Ensuring that virtual environments are optimized is taking a toll on IT team time and resources. Although respondents stated they are using multiple tools, it seems they are not effective in empowering IT teams to resolve issues fast. More than half of the IT pros surveyed stated that they face application performance issues every month, and 44 percent indicated that it can take three hours or more to solve these problems. These issues cause significant interruptions, which is especially problematic for smaller IT teams who are being pulled in many directions. For larger IT groups, having to pull in multiple disciplines to come to a resolution ends up draining time.

How to Overcome These Challenges

The survey results reveal that when it comes to leveraging VMware for business critical applications, there are many obstacles for IT teams in ensuring these systems are running effectively. Modern IT analytics solutions that use machine learning to provide accurate recommendations can drastically reduce the time and effort that companies are spending on delivering critical application services, by focusing on knowledge discovery versus reporting metrics.

Jerry Melnick is President and CEO of SIOS Technology.