Forrester Consulting examines the importance of measuring application performance

Optimising the performance of information technology applications is vital for the success of business and the improvement of profits.

This is according to an overwhelming 88 percent of 202 senior IT executives at large US and European companies surveyed in a recent study by Forrester Consulting. The study, commissioned by Compuware Corporation, focused on the importance of delivering application service to their business and the challenges they faced with service management.

Consensus was also shown by 87 percent of the respondents saying that measuring performance at the end-user level and rapidly resolving significant performance problems best accomplished this goal.

Business drives the need for application service, according to the IT executives, with 76 percent of them feeling increased pressure to improve the end-user experience of business-critical applications. They also agreed that improving this experience directly impacted the bottom line positively.

A growing reliance on applications among business users and a drive towards increased efficiency and IT cost-reductions were the leading reasons cited for an increase in the importance of application service management.

When asked how the level of importance compared to two years ago, 63 percent of executives said that the level was more or much more important, with only one percent replying that it was less.

While there was agreement on an end-user focus, respondents faced problems reaching all of their users. Gathering investigative information and data to explore problems and the cost of deploying and maintaining a tool were cited as the main obstacles to doing so. Accessing remote customers, business partners and physical locations were also noted as challenges.

"Compuware recognises the importance of reaching all users inside and outside of corporate environments," says Richard Hepplestone, Application Performance Management consultant at Compuware. "To this end, Compuware introduced a new version of Vantage that expands the scope of monitoring to all users, including remote users such as web site users, via an agentless monitoring device. This new solution lowers the cost of deployment and eliminates the need to access remote customers with hardware."

Respondents also confronted challenges when troubleshooting performance problems, relying on a resource-intensive and manual process. The main reason for involving multiple people to resolve performance issues was identified by 86 percent of respondents as difficulty in isolating the source of performance problems.

An overwhelming 94 percent, however, said they involved multiple people in problem resolution, and a significant 38 percent involved more than six people to resolve problems.