Compuware Corp announced the results of a study on application performance conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Compuware. The study revealed that 64 percent of respondents believe that poor application perfor­mance results in significant financial losses for their organizations. Despite these losses, the study also showed that IT still takes a costly and reactive 'fire fighting' approach to application perfor­mance management (APM).

Additional highlights of the study:

• 47 percent of respondents stated that end users complain of poor application performance even when monitoring tools say everything is on target
• 64 percent of the time problems are not discovered until end users call the service desk
• When application perfor­mance issues are uncovered, 55 percent of IT organizations have six or more people involved in troubleshooting, diagnosis and resolution of poor performance in an inefficient 'war room' setting
• 58 percent of respondents identify growing application complexity as a key challenge, an issue that Forrester predicts will accelerate with the introduction of applications based on services-oriented architectures and virtualization technologies

These results show that traditional monitoring tools alone cannot effectively identify performance issues and move IT organizations from reactive to proactive resolution. Complete results of the study further detail the business and technology problems that lead to these financial impacts, while high­lighting recommendations for a more proactive, compre­hensive approach to application management.

In the study, Forrester Consulting stated, “IT organiza­tions that do not invest in application performance management tools that consoli­date data across technology silos, including the multitude of applications that run in parallel, will not be able to deliver a proactive, holistic, business-oriented service to their customers.”

To meet these challenges, Forrester recommends a holistic approach to application perfor­mance management including 'outside-in' service management, which helps IT organizations understand services from the business perspective. Forrester also recommends end-user experience monitoring, as clients' impressions are the most important aspect of application performance, and a move toward proactive identification and resolution of performance problems.

“This study reflects the strong and interwoven connec­tion between application performance and business results. IT organizations need to start by understanding application performance from the end-user perspective to become proactive, to improve costly issue resolution and to avoid negative business impact,” said Steve Tack, VP, Compuware.

This commissioned study was sponsored by Compuware and conducted online by Forrester Consulting. The respondents were comprised of 389 technology decision-makers from around the world who are actively involved in service level management and application performance management.

DQC NEWS BUREAU

Page(s)   1