Why Enterprises Need Better Monitoring Tools to Fix IT Infrastructure

Many enterprise users routinely experience application performance slowdowns and even outages, according to a recent survey from Virtual Instruments. The resulting report, titled “IT Monitoring Tool Gaps are Impacting the Business,” cites infrastructure deficiencies as the most common culprit—especially those which negatively impact networks and servers. To respond, IT is investing in a large number of infrastructure monitoring tools. Yet, relatively few of these tools are providing “full” app and infrastructure visibility. More than 400 global IT professionals took part in the research, which was conducted by Dimensional Research. The following slideshow highlights key survey findings, with charts provided courtesy of Virtual Instruments.

Virtual Instruments reports that 86 percent of respondents said their users experience application outages at least twice a year, but 20 percent said their users experience these outages more than 10 times a year.

More than three in five respondents said their users experience “significant” app performance slowdowns at least four times a year. Three in 10 said their users experience this more than 10 times a year.

Employees, obviously, are most impacted by app outages and issues, as cited by 86 percent of respondents. But customers are too (as cited by 79 percent of respondents), in addition to partners (51 percent) and suppliers (35 percent).

When asked about the most common cause of app outages and performance slowdowns, 47 percent of respondents cited infrastructure-related problems. About one-third said the causes were app-related, while 12 percent said unexpected workload shifts created these problems.

In taking a closer look at the infrastructure-related causes, 71 percent of respondents said network issues have created these outages or slowdowns over the last two years. Server issues were the second-leading cause (as cited by 66 percent of respondents), followed by storage or I/O issues (46 percent) and storage network-related issues (42 percent).

Nearly two of five respondents said they are most concerned about their internal IT infrastructure causing outages or slowdowns. Three of 10, however, said they were most concerned about their public cloud infrastructure causing these problems.

More than seven in 10 respondents said their company uses at least five IT infrastructure monitoring tools while 15 percent said their company uses more than 20.

A minority of respondents—46 percent—said their tools provide “full” app and infrastructure visibility. In most cases, respondents said their tools provide either “limited” or “minimal” visibility.

More than four of five respondents said that—when users experience app outages or slowdowns—IT will identify the root cause within 24 hours either “always” or “most of the time.” In fact, 58 percent said their infrastructure management tools provide alerts to proactively resolve issues before they affect users.

Four of five respondents also said their operations teams meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for mean time to resolution either “always” or “most of the time.” Only 4 percent said this happens “rarely” or “never.”