2010 State of the Network Study
IT Teams Lack Appropriate Tools to Manage Cloud and Virtual Networks
Despite Being in the Dark, Majority Benefit from New Technologies
Key findings show a majority of companies are implementing new technologies, but lack appropriate tools to accurately manage performance.
Despite the monitoring challenges of these new network environments, 85 percent of respondents realized benefits by migrating to the cloud, including infrastructure cost reductions and increased application availability. Similarly, 80 percent achieved cost reductions through virtualizing resources.
While network teams saw substantial benefits from cloud computing, virtualization, and unified communication initiatives, they are spending more time managing and troubleshooting related performance problems. We were surprised by the number of organizations failing to verify if their monitoring solutions support these environments. If IT can't address these problems, they risk not only degrading application performance but threatening overall business productivity.
The results were based on responses by network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and South America. Responses were collected from September 22 to October 20, 2010.
Resources:
Cloud coverage: Over half to implement cloud computing, slightly more lack appropriate tools to troubleshoot cloud problems, and 47 percent report improved app availability and lower infrastructure costs by moving to the cloud.
Top troubleshooting challenge: Eighty-five percent say it's identifying the problem source.
Virtual blind spots: Thirty-five percent indicate troubleshooting abilities worsened after implementing virtualization.