* IT professionals tout benefis of cross-stovepipe management, but for most it's still a goal unreached
In today’s day and technology age, it is common knowledge that in order to optimize network performance, you must also manage the performance of multiple elements across technology silos, such as network, server, storage and applications. It is not common practice, however, for a majority of network managers to do so. That is, at least, according to a recent survey by network and application performance management software maker NetScout. The company, along with industry pundit Jim Metzler, recently polled more than 150 IT professionals at large U.S. companies and government agencies and found that while most will preach the tenets of cross-stovepipe management, a majority haven’t achieved that lofty goal just yet.
In today’s day and technology age, it is common knowledge that in order to optimize network performance, you must also manage the performance of multiple elements across technology silos, such as network, server, storage and applications. It is not common practice, however, for a majority of network managers to do so.That is, at least, according to a recent survey by network and application performance management software maker NetScout. The company, along with industry pundit Jim Metzler, recently polled more than 150 IT professionals at large U.S. companies and government agencies and found that while most will preach the tenets of cross-stovepipe management, a majority haven’t achieved that lofty goal just yet.
In fact, only one in 14 respondents said they regularly performed troubleshooting across the domains of IT. Less than 10% of the respondents stated that “they regularly planned and funded IT initiatives holistically across all of the IT disciplines,” NetScout says. Yet another one in seven reported that they did have control of technologies encompassing the entire IT organization, including network and applications.
More interesting to note is that some 89% of survey respondents cited application and optimal performance the source for IT value, over the 11% that cited the infrastructure. Along with the applications push, 94% of IT managers surveyed plan to increase their use of Web services in 2006, and 84% said they already moderately use Web services, which span across technology stovepipes to integrate applications on the fly.
As for network security, 78% of respondents said the “need to increase network security protection would have the greatest impact on IT budgets and infrastructures” in the next year. A close second to that for 2006, more then three-fourths said compliance with government regulations will have a “significant impact” on their network and applications planning next year.
