Over the past several weeks, we’ve been conducting surveys and analyzing data concerning the true state of application delivery. And even though the full report is not yet available, we’re ready to share some of the results with you at Webtorials.
In particular, there are two complementary graphs that summarize some of our findings. In the first, we explore what some areas for optimization, and the second concerns network and application management. In both cases, we asked what some of the areas are in which the organization needs to get better at over the next year.
This led to some Q&A between us. The first question that Steve asked Jim is, “What conclusions did you draw from the responses about the importance and difficulty of network and application optimization to IT organizations?”
Jim responded, “Perhaps the biggest surprise was the large number of optimization tasks that IT organizations said are very important for them to get better at over the next year. Also, while I was not surprised that ‘Relating the performance of applications to the impact on the business’ was the most important task, I was somewhat surprised that ‘Ensuring acceptable performance for VoIP traffic’ was the second most important topic. I was also surprised that the survey respondents did not find many of the optimization tasks to be very difficult. For example, I think that ensuring acceptable performance for the applications that are acquired from a Software-as-a- Service provider is a difficult task. In general, the survey respondents did not.”
Looking forward, Steve also asked, “We’ve been talking about Application Delivery for several years now. Is there still anything “new” to learn?”
Jim’s response? “Yes, the results indicate that there is a lot to learn. For example, the majority of survey respondents indicated that some tasks that I thought were already performed well by most IT organizations were tasks that they needed to get better at this year. I already mentioned one of those tasks – “Ensuring acceptable performance for VoIP traffic.” Another such task is “Optimizing the performance of TCP.”
“In addition, there were a number of tasks that the survey respondents indicated were important to get better at that belong to a second generation of application delivery challenges. This includes improving the performance of applications used by mobile workers and ensuring acceptable performance for telepresence traffic.”
For detailed information and to join our conversation, we invite you to join us at Webtorials.
