BYOD programs and legacy network performance management tools are challenges facing IT departments, a survey finds.
Network performance management remains a significant issue
for organizations of all sizes as IT departments grapple with emerging technologies and legacy infrastructure, according to a report from network
monitoring solutions specialist SevOne. The survey of 711 global IT
managers across a variety of industries found 90 percent do not have
confidence in themselves to find problems before users are impacted.
The survey suggested an inability to consistently and quickly detect
problems contributes to this lack of confidence.
Nearly a third
(30 percent) of those surveyed said they do not have a way to
proactively detect problems, which often means they only find out about
critical problems when users complain. The frequency with which
these problems arise is also troubling, with 40 percent of respondents
saying they experience critical issues one to five times each month, and
nearly a fifth (19 percent) said they experience critical issues five
to 10 times each month. A worrying 12 percent don't have any idea how
many critical issues they have per month.
"Perhaps more vexing
is the amount of time it takes to solve issues. On average, it takes
five hours from the moment a critical problem occurs to detecting it,
determining the problem's cause and correcting," an excerpt from the
study explained. "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."
Further
complicating matters is the presence of legacy network performance
management tools that cannot keep pace with emerging technologies and
trends such as cloud computing, enterprise mobility, virtualization, and
bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, which are creating new
challenges for IT departments and bringing additional strain to
overburdened networks.
The survey found just 41 percent of
survey respondents felt 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, which
find their way onto corporate networks through BYOD programs. Close to
80 percent of IT is stressed and concerned about people bringing in
their own devices to work, according to the report.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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