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Better measurement and analysis tools are required for IT operations excellence, according to the results of the Continuity Software IT Operations Analytics Benchmark survey, underscoring the importance of operational analytics in meeting IT performance goals.
Based on results collected across a variety of industry verticals, including financial services, health care, manufacturing and retail, 40 percent of organizations surveyed cited better measurement and analysis tools as the most effective means for achieving operations excellence, followed by tools to detect cross-domain IT configuration issues (22 percent) and tools to enforce IT best practices (19 percent).
Storage and network performance rank highest, with 71 percent of the organizations surveyed monitoring storage and network key performance indicators (KPIs). Other areas of IT operations that are commonly monitored and measured include applications (69 percent), databases (66 percent) and clusters (49 percent).
However, cloud environments continue to lag behind–just 14 percent of the organizations surveyed monitor and measure cloud KPIs, and 43 percent of the organizations surveyed never analyze configuration consistency in their cloud environment.
Survey results also indicated frequently tracking configuration consistency helps organizations meet their goals. More than half (53 percent) of the organizations that track configuration consistency on a daily basis across the IT infrastructure are meeting or exceeding their goals, compared to around one-third of the organizations that track only portions of the infrastructure.
“Few would argue that business organizations that deliver IT operational excellence enjoy a distinct advantage over their competitors,” Doron Pinhas, chief technology officer at Continuity Software, said in a statement. “As this survey reveals, organizations that are successful in achieving this goal invest in measurement and analysis of KPIs and are able to transform the collected insights into immediate actions.”
Large organizations are the most common users of analytical tools to monitor and measure IT performance goals, with 57 percent of the large organizations surveyed using analytical tools to monitor, and measure IT performance goals, versus just 29 percent of small companies.
In addition, cross-domain operational excellence is mostly measured by uptime, as 89 percent of the organizations surveyed measure uptime across most or all IT domains, while 66 percent measure performance and 51 percent measure the number of open issues.
“It is also interesting to note that while the push to move data and applications into the cloud continues to escalate, most cloud infrastructure remains under-monitored, and consequently at great risk of unplanned downtime and service disruption,” Pinhas said.