Enterprise IT teams face huge operational challenges as they come to terms with the latest high-speed, network-centric technologies such as cloud, unified communications and virtual desktop infrastructure, according to a survey sponsored by network recording and network visibility infrastructure specialist Endace.
Almost a fourth (23 percent) of organizations experience serious service-affecting problems on a daily basis, while an additional 25 percent admit to experiencing serious network issues each month, according to the survey, which is based on interviews with more than 100 senior network IT professionals from organizations with 5,000 to 200,000 employees. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said that they do not know which applications are in use on their network, while 53 percent admit that employees use applications that violate IT policies.
The survey indicated organizations are rapidly adopting network-centric computing, with 64 percent of organizations having deployed a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform, 79 percent having adopted unified communications (UC), 65 percent using some form of server virtualization and 50 percent consolidating data centers. Three-quarters of organizations have invested in new detection capabilities to help manage the ever-growing dependency and complexity associated with the network and the broader IT environment, such as virtual environments and cloud-based infrastructures.
“Most IT shops have invested heavily in detection technologies that alert on issues and correlation technologies that attempt to filter and triage the most important issues. But what we’ve learned from this study is that many shops still face long resolution times far too often.” Spencer Greene, Endace senior vice president of marketing and product management, said in a statement. “As a result of this learning, we’re working with organizations to apply network history to the problem of maximum time to resolution (MAX-TTR).”
Despite an abundance of monitoring tools, nearly 30 percent of organizations do not have a clear understanding of bandwidth utilization, which makes troubleshooting end-user issues extremely challenging, the report noted. Organizations can have up to 250 performance-related trouble tickets open at any given time, with half of respondents reporting that at least 50 percent of their trouble tickets stay open for more than 24 hours, and their hardest network problems can take up to 30 days or more to rectify.
“There’s no doubt organizations are recognizing the critical role IT operations plays in delivering business continuity. However, the relatively high frequency of service-affecting issues and the slow resolution times reported by respondents clearly indicates there’s still work to do,” the report concluded. “To avoid operational meltdowns, we believe organizations need to make strategic investments in key technologies, such as network recording, that help IT teams respond more effectively to problems. If organizations focus on stop-gaps and don’t invest in visibility and network history, they will be continually playing catch-up and find themselves spending empty dollars instead of making a real investment in operational productivity and insurance against disasters.”