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Compuware-Sponsored Study Shows that Many IT Organizations are Reactive in Solving Performance Problems

Compuware Corporation announced the results of a recent study commissioned by the company and conducted by Forrester Consulting.  The study, which surveyed 430 senior IT executives from large companies in the U.S. and Europe, focused on how IT organizations approach performance management of their critical business applications.

Conducted between October and November of 2003, the study was designed to understand how IT organizations approach application performance management. The results were based on in-depth phone interviews with key decision-makers using a structured research guide. These key decision-makers included 255 IT executives in North America and 175 IT executives in Europe (France, Germany, United Kingdom). Seventeen percent of executives represented companies with annual revenues in excess of $10 billion; 60 percent of the executives represented companies with annual revenues ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion; and 22 percent of the executives represented companies with annual revenues ranging from $500 million to $1 billion.

When asked how their organizations know that end users are experiencing problems with the applications they are using, 67 percent of respondents indicated that they are unaware a problem typically exists until the end user calls the help desk. Another 6 percent said they become aware of the problem when they receive management complaints. In total, 41 percent of respondents indicated “reactive” when asked to rate their organization’s strategy for maintaining application performance.

“With IT departments having to support an increasing number of applications and users, it’s not surprising to see that so many are taking a reactive approach to delivering IT service management,” said Tommi White, chief operating officer at Compuware.  “However, as a result of this reactive approach, many IT departments are drowning under the pressure of help desk calls. Businesses cannot afford for this to continue, as a high level of application service is critical to their success.  IT departments need to be more proactive and monitor end-to-end service to ensure that the business is not impacted by application performance problems.”

The study also showed that only 28 percent of respondents could identify and accurately gauge five key measures of business impact, which include applications affected by the problem, users affected by the problem, business locations affected by the problem, persistence of the problem and specific transactions affected by the problem.

“To illustrate the magnitude of this issue,” continued White, “30 percent of respondents said they cannot even determine which applications are actually experiencing performance problems.”

While understanding the origin and severity of performance problems is critical in delivering service to the business, it is just as important to quickly and efficiently solve these problems once they are identified and located. The study found that only thirty percent of respondents indicated they have well-defined and understood processes in place for solving performance problems, with nearly 20 percent of respondents revealing that their process for solving performance problems is fairly ad hoc. When the problem is handed off for resolution, respondents estimated that the person receiving the hand-off could only resolve the problem an average of 64 percent of the time.

As for resource management, 69 percent of respondents indicated that anywhere from six to 50 or more people spend time resolving performance problems. With regard to time management, 30 percent of executives estimated that these staff members spend a quarter to a half or more of their time solving application and infrastructure performance problems.

“Being reactive in approach to performance management is costly on many levels,” said White. “First, you have the direct cost associated with poor- or non-performing applications; then you have the indirect cost associated with paying a lot of people to find and fix the problem; and finally you have opportunity costs – what isn’t getting accomplished while your staff is running around trying to find and resolve performance problems?”


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