Enterprise IT is facing mounting challenges in tracking and delivering network performance, according to a new survey conducted by SevOne.

In a survey of 711 global IT managers at companies of various sizes and representing a variety of industries, nearly all – or 90 percent – say they do not have confidence in themselves to find problems before end users are impacted.

That lack of confidence stems from an inability to consistently and quickly detect problems. In fact, 30 percent of the respondents say they do not have a way to proactively detect problems, which often means they only find out about critical problems when end users complain.

Nearly half, or 40 percent, experience critical issues one to five times each month. About 19 percent experience critical issues five to ten times each month. Interestingly, 12 percent do not know how many critical issues they have each month.

On average, it takes five hours from the moment a critical problem occurs to detecting it, determining the problem’s cause and correcting, the study found.

The trouble stems from a lack of robust performance management tools, and that is reflected in the fact that 80 percent of the market is not happy with their current performance management offerings, according to the survey.

Respondents cite maintenance costs, scalability issues, complex usability, and a lack of real-time reporting as the problems with their existing performance management systems.

Many of these performance tools are legacy systems unable to keep up with or support newer technologies including IPv6, virtualization, cloud computing and enterprise mobility.

Only 41 percent of survey respondents feel their IT staff is extremely well educated or well educated on how to manage the new technologies, like IPv6, and their associated challenges.

Even fewer are ready for the impact of personal employee handheld devices, such as iPads and iPhones, on their corporate networks. In fact, close to 80% of IT is stressed and concerned about people bringing in their own devices to work, according to survey findings.

The survey was launched July 31 and concluded on August 3, and queried a variety of IT leaders. More than 75 percent of the respondents were individual network managers and administrators.