The survey results show that companies are having a hard time keeping up with the performance management requirements of virtualized IT infrastructures. Transformational IT technologies like virtualization and cloud computing are changing the way IT services are provisioned and delivered.
While these transformational IT technologies offer significant operational and cost benefits, they also make management of business services much more complex and challenging because of the dynamic nature of the infrastructure. IT operations expect that management systems for their virtualized infrastructure be as automated, agile and easy to use as the virtualized infrastructure itself.
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INTRODUCTION
Transformational IT technologies like desktop and server This survey was conducted between
virtualization and cloud computing are changing the way IT services November 1, 2011 and January 20,
are provisioned and delivered. 2012 and elicited responses from 150 IT
operations professionals in North and South
These technologies offer significant operational and cost benefits,
America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions.
but at the same time they make management of business services
operating on new, dynamic infrastructures much more complex
and challenging. As a result, performance management practices
and solutions are undergoing a dramatic change as well in order to
deal with these new technologies and challenges.
We invited IT operations professionals to share their experience
with, and requirements for, performance management in this
new environment. The resulting report aims to bring clarity to this
dynamic situation, identify emerging performance management
trends and best practices, and provide actionable guidance for
service owners and IT operations professionals going into 2012.
Specific areas we covered in this survey include the most
critical performance management challenges experienced by IT
operations professionals tasked with managing transformational
IT environments, the business impact of performance issues,
requirements for performance management solutions in complex,
transformational IT environments.
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Key Findings
IT operations professionals can’t easily find and diagnose root cause problems
This is the #1 performance management challenge with 54% of responses. IT operations staff can’t tell where
the root of the problem is when a user says performance is “slow”: Is it the Network? Server? Database? Virtual
Machine? In response, a majority of 67% would like to see solutions that help them determine when a user says
“it is slow” where the real cause is.
Decreased customer satisfaction
This is the #1 business impact of poor IT service performance say 53% of respondents. Decreased user
productivity (44%) and an increase of IT operations cost (44%) are of real concern among IT operations
professionals.
IT operations is looking for proactive problem solving techniques
to common performance problems
63% of respondents are looking for performance management solutions that allow them to become more
proactive and find problems before they impact service levels.
The need to monitor virtual and physical machines
53% of respondents are looking for solutions that can monitor both virtual and physical machines, reflecting the
new dynamics and inter-dependencies introduced by virtualization layers in transformational IT environments.
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOLS
for Transformational IT Environments
We asked IT operations professionals to share their thoughts on IT environments are becoming
performance management in transformational IT environments more complex, dynamic,
to better understand the challenges they face with performance more interdependent, and
management today, and what changes they want to implement
as a result much more
going forward.
challenging to manage.
Top Performance Management
Challenges Facing IT Operations
IT environments are becoming more complex, dynamic, more
interdependent, and as a result much more challenging to
manage. The responses to the survey question about performance
management challenges reflect this change.
The single most mentioned performance management challenge
with 54% of responses is that IT administrators/IT operations
staff often can’t tell where the root of the problem is when a user
says performance is “slow”: Is it the Network? Server? Database?
Virtual Machine?
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The inability to proactively identify performance issues before they affect end users (41%) and the time spent
troubleshooting issues (39%) were the next biggest problems. 37% of respondents felt they lack end-to-end
visibility into service performance.
What are your top-3 challenges regarding managing
the performance of your critical IT services?
Can’t tell when users say performance is “slow” where
the problem is – Network? Server? Database? VM? 53.3%
Unable to proactively identify performance 40.7%
issues before they affect end users
Lot of time is spent on troubleshooting 38.7%
performance issues
Not able to monitor end-to-end 37.3%
to see service performance issues
Don’t have visibility into 36.7%
the performance issues
Increased complexity driven by 30.0%
virtualization & cloud technologies
Have a lot of performance metrics 22.0%
but don’t know how to interpret
Can’t monitor the performance of 22.0%
applications in a virtualized infrastructure
Unable to monitor the perfromance 16.7%
of applications in the cloud
Increased complexity driven by 14.7%
endpoint consumerization (BYOD)
Other 2.7%
0% 20% 40% 60%
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Business Impact of Poor IT Service Performance
It is obvious that service delivery issues have a direct impact on business. But what are the most critical issues?
53% of respondents selected decreased customer satisfaction as their number one business impact of poor IT
service performance. Decreased user productivity (44%) and an increase of IT operations cost (44%) round out
the top three. Clearly, the state of performance management is causing IT organizations significant pain.
What are the most critical business impacts of poor
IT service performance to your organization?
Decreased customer 52.8%
satisfaction
Increase in cost
of IT operations 43.8%
Decreased user
productivity 43.8%
Decreased effectiveness 36.1%
of IT staff
Direct revenue loss 33.3%
Decreased
business agility 31.9%
Damage to brand
reputation 31.3%
Decline in employee
satisfaction/engagement 29.9%
SLA penalties paid 20.8%
Inability to launch
new business services 19.4%
Other 1.4%
0% 20% 40% 60%
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The Status-Quo
60% of our respondents are using multiple, independent Only 30% of respondents
performance monitoring tools – one for the network, another
for the servers, yet another for database, and one more for the
are using tools that provide
virtualization tier. visibility into multiple
infrastructure tiers.
However, integrated monitoring across multiple infrastructure tiers
is not common yet. Only 30% of respondents are using at least
one tool that provides visibility into multiple infrastructure tiers. This
is in contrast to over 66% of respondents looking for solutions that
provide an answer to cross-layer performance issues.
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Virtualization Performance Management Today
We also asked respondents to indicate how they manage the performance of their virtualized IT infrastructures
today. For monitoring virtualization, 47% of our respondents currently use tools provided by the virtualization
platform vendors. 45% of respondents are using third party tools. Significantly, over 33% of respondents felt they
did not have the appropriate tools for managing the virtualization tier. This problem is likely to get even more severe
as the adoption of virtualization becomes more widespread.
How do you manage virtualization performance today?
28.7% Virtualization
vendor tools
We don’t have the
right tools today
27.0% Third party tools that
33.9% manage both virtual and
physical environment
Traditional
monitoring tools
15.7% Third party tools
dedicated to virtualization
performance management
47.0% 1.7% Other
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Focus Areas for Better Performance Management
To better understand the most difficult areas to manage in an IT environment, we asked our survey
respondents to select the top “blind spots” for managing service performance.
Monitoring of storage (41%) and servers hosted on virtual machines (39%) were the top blind spots. The
number three spot is held by monitoring enterprise apps such as SAP or MS Exchange with 36%, closely
followed by monitoring virtual desktops with 35%.
What are your organization’s “blind spots” for managing service performance?
Monitoring storage 41.3%
Monitoring virtual servers 39.3%
Monitoring database servers 37.3%
Monitoring enterprise applications
like SAP, R3, Exchange, AD, etc. 36.0%
Monitoring virtual desktop infrastructures 35.3%
Monitoring Java or .Net applications 30.0%
Monitoring Citrix Xen application 26.0%
Monitoring applications hosted 24.7%
in the public cloud
Other 7.3%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
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How to Improve Performance 67% would like to see
Management Capabilities solutions that help them
We asked our respondents to identify the one area where they determine the real cause
see the most room for improvement in performance management when a user says “it is slow” -
capabilities today. A majority of 67% would like to see solutions is it the Network? Database?
that help them determine when a user says “it is slow” where Application, VMware, Citrix?
the real cause is (Network? Database? Application, VMware,
Citrix?).
This mirrors the single biggest challenge our respondents listed
– 54% of administrators often simply cannot tell the cause of
a service slowdown, leading to frustrated end users, impacted
business processes, lengthy repair cycles, and misallocation
of resources. 63% of respondents are looking for performance
management solutions that allow them to become more
proactive and find problems before they impact service levels.
53% of respondents are looking for solutions that can monitor
both virtual and physical machines, reflecting the new dynamics
and inter-dependencies introduced by virtualization layers.
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If you were looking to improve the monitoring and performance management
of your IT infrastructure, you would look for...
Solutions that can help you determine when a
user says “it’s slow” where the real cause is 66.4%
(Network? Database? Application? VMware? Citrix?)
Solutions that help you become more proactive and
to find problems before they impact your service 63.6%
Solutions that can monitor both virtual and physical machines 52.9%
Solutions that provide more in-depth metrics into the performance
of specific applications or infrastructure components you control 49.3%
Solutions that help you monitor parts of the infrastructure
you don’t have control over (e.g., monitoring someone 41.4%
else’s applications that your application relies on)
Other 2.1%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
When drilling a bit deeper into specific capabilities required for IT service performance monitoring and management,
66% of respondents are looking for a “general physician” type of solution that enables quick triage of service
issues and identification of the root cause (rather than more specialist type “deep dive” tools).
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Licensing and Delivery Models for Performance Management Tools
We asked respondents how they preferred to have performance management systems delivered to them.
Only 18% are likely to consider an outsourced monitoring and management service. SaaS-based delivery
models are also not popular: only 28% of respondents preferred a SaaS or cloud based delivery model. Most
prefer management software installed on premise (43%), and licensed perpetually or annually (43%). The
growing expectation is also that the management software will be delivered as a virtual appliance (47%),
rather than software that is installed on the customer’s servers.
I prefer performance monitoring solutions to be delivered as...
Virtual appliance 47.4%
Licensed software installed on premise 42.9%
Software installed on premise and licensed annually 42.9%
Hardware appliance 30.8%
Software offered from the cloud as a service 27.8%
Outsourced monitoring/management service 18.8%
Other 2.3%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
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Agent or No Agent?
Respondents were also asked about their preferences for agentless vs. agent-based monitoring solutions.
Our results indicate that this old “battle” is more marketing hype than reality. The vast majority (77%) of
respondents want to have both options in a performance monitoring and management solution, so they can
pick and choose the monitoring mode to fit the specific requirements of each monitored system and situation.
I require performance monitoring solutions that support...
26.3%
Allows me to choose whether to use agent-based
and agentless monitoring
18.8% Agentless monitoring only
Agent-based monitoring only
3.0%
76.7% Other
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TRENDS IN ADOPTION
of Transformational IT Technologies
The following provides an overview of the environments managed by our survey respondents, in terms of
infrastructure, scale and mix of physical, virtual and cloud technologies. The respondents were asked about their
rate of adoption of transformational IT technologies.
Scale of the Infrastructure
39% of our respondents have less than 50 physical servers,
whereas 28% of our respondents have over 200 physical servers
in their infrastructure. This spread was in line with the profile of
organizations participating in the survey.
Adoption of Virtualization
38% of our respondents have over 50% of their infrastructure
virtualized. Clearly, virtualization is a mainstream technology for
the enterprise. While 55% of respondents indicated that they
are using virtualization for servers only, another 40% are using
virtualization for servers and desktops. Only 5% of respondents
are using virtualization only for their desktops (i.e., not for their
servers).
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Adoption of Desktop Virtualization
75% of respondents who are using desktop virtualization indicated
that they have less than one thousand virtual desktops deployed.
5% of respondents have over 10,000 virtual desktops deployed.
Clearly, many are testing the utility and ROI of virtual desktops,
while a few have adopted desktop virtualization on a very large scale.
If you have virtual desktops
deployed, how many desktops
do you have virtualized?
Factors Limiting the Widespread Adoption of
Virtualization Technologies
4.1%
The respondents were asked what limited the widespread adoption 4.1%
of virtualization technologies. The number one factor was budget
(44%). System complexity and performance concerns were joint
second (40%). User experience issues were yet another factor 13.3%
(32%) holding back more widespread adoption of virtualization
technologies.
Adoption of Cloud Computing
78.6%
81% of respondents have less than 25% of their applications
in cloud environments (public or private), while only 8% of
respondents have over 75% of their applications in cloud
environments. Clearly, while many organizations are looking
at cloud computing technologies, cloud computing is not yet Less than 1,000 5,001 to 10,000
mainstream in the enterprise. 1,001 to 5,000 More than 10,000
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PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS
This survey was conducted between November 1, 2011 and
January 20, 2012 and elicited responses from 150 IT operations
professionals in North and South America, Europe and Asia
Pacific regions.
We believe that the responses to this survey are reflective of the
needs of a majority of organizations as the profile of respondents
is a representative sample, including IT operations professionals
working in the finance and banking sector, government, education,
system integrators, service providers, and value-added resellers
of virtualization and management products.
While 40% of our respondents work for enterprises with 1,000
employees or more, about 45% work for organizations with
less than 100 employees. The equal spread across large and
small organizations means that the results of the survey are
representative of the needs of both large and small organizations.
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SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
In summary, the enterprise performance management space itself is in This situation drives
a state of transformation. This is a result of two major trends:
demand for a new,
1) Increased focus on the end user experience and the holistic approach to
business process they support, and
managing performance
2) Increased complexity and dynamics introduced by
transformational IT technologies. across the service chain.
Many traditional performance management tools and practices are not
equipped to manage the additional layers of abstraction as they have
not been designed to handle the new and dynamic nature of inter-
dependencies that virtualization technologies introduce.
This situation drives demand for a new, holistic approach to managing performance across the service chain that:
Provides 360-degree service visibility across Delivers deep, actionable insights into the true
every layer and every tier - from desktops to causes of cross-domain service performance
applications, and from network to storage issues
Supports virtualized environments with Enables administrators to pre-emptively detect,
performance correlation across physical, diagnose, and fix root-cause issues before
virtual and cloud tiers users are impacted
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