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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.