Senior Editor Denise Dubie guides you through the latest developments in management tools and services.
When asked recently about the priorities and challenges involved with managing applications, senior IT professionals had a lot to say.
A July 2008 survey of 286 senior IT professionals conducted by automated configuration management vendor mValent revealed that IT managers have cost cutting, productivity and high availability for business-critical applications on their minds. The survey revealed that while nearly 50% of those surveyed felt compelled to reduce costs in 2008, 44% are also tasked with ensuring high availability for applications and business services.
That job is proving to be more difficult than in the past and requires more staff than before as applications and the infrastructure supporting them grow ever more complex. According to the survey, 46% of Fortune 1000 IT pros use 11 or more people to manage configure changes to application infrastructure assets, which can include anything from application and Web servers to middleware, databases and operating systems. And 22% of those polled use between six and 10 staffers to tackle application configuration management.
All the effort is probably based on the fact that one-third of survey respondents estimate an hour of application downtime can subtract up to $100,000 from the company's bottom line. And some are turning to automation technologies to help with the task of managing application complexity. Nearly 40% are looking at automation tools to enforce configuration consistency across several environments including development, staging and production. More than one-third want to improve staff productivity and 30% want to speed troubleshooting efforts around poor application performance.
"By automating core areas of application infrastructure maintenance/support such as configuration, change and release management, IT organizations can gain significantly more time and effort to focus on the development and deployment of applications designed to drive competitive advantage," according to mValent's report including the survey results.
Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.
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Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell and BlueStripe co-founder Vic Nyman discuss a breakthrough approach to application problem management. Learn the new approach for ITSM problem management, which provides: Rapid isolation of application slow-downs to specific components for quick problem resolution, 24/7 monitoring for proactive notification of potential issues before end users are impacted and much more.
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Improving Application Performance Troubleshooting
Diagnosing why an application is slow is hard, at times taking days or weeks to isolate and resolve. This paper explains the challenges involved using current management tools, provides a 'wish list' for application management and analysis, and explains the need for an application system-wide approach that monitors entire applications, not components.
Download Whitepaper
Virtual Vigilance: Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments
This paper highlights the impact of virtualization on application performance. "Managing Application Performance in Virtual Environments" states: "Best-in-Class organizations are predominately taking actions around improving visibility across both physical and virtual systems, assessing the business impact of application performance and understanding interdependencies of applications in virtualized environments."
Download Whitepaper
Application Service Requests: The Missing Link for Pragmatic ITSM
Forrester Research analyst Glenn O'Donnell and BlueStripe co-founder Vic Nyman discuss a breakthrough approach to application problem management. Learn the new approach for ITSM problem management, which provides: Rapid isolation of application slow-downs to specific components for quick problem resolution, 24/7 monitoring for proactive notification of potential issues before end users are impacted and much more.
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Comments (1)
Don't Ignore Performance Management AutomationBy Steve Henning on September 4, 2008, 9:42 pmI'm not at all surprised by the results of the mValent survey. Clearly IT is being asked to do more with less labor spend and automation is the only way to achieve...
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