CIO Headache? Take a dose of APM and call us in the morning

TRAC Research’s “CIO’s View of Application Performance Management” has just been released. Since this kind of data directly reflects the opinions of decision-makers in enterprise IT Operations, we pay close attention.

The Stoneham, Massachusetts-based market research firm specializes in IT performance management and this latest Market Insight Report, authored by Bojan Simic and Jeremy Rozen, has useful data around defining and solving CIO headaches that result from their constant struggle to “create competitive advantage and generate new revenue streams through innovation while keeping cost at an optimal level”.

According to TRAC’s research, 59% of CIOs surveyed stated the ability to increase the amount of IT resources that are available for investing in innovation and new services as their top strategic goal, while the third highest rated goal of CIOs was to reduce the cost of managing IT (48%).

The data also shows that implementing Application Performance Management (APM) strategies has a direct positive effect in both of these areas.  For CIO’s, this means less headaches.

Also from the report:

The key values of deploying APM technologies are:

  • Increasing productivity by isolating and repairing the root causes of application performance issues
  • Detecting potential performance problems before they impact end-users
  • Measuring the impact of application performance on business goals, such as increased revenue by delivering web content quickly
  • Reducing time to market while improving user experience in order to better align IT resources with overall business goals

Simic and Rosen also turn it around and look at the negative side. The business impact of application performance problems is clear and widespread, lead by a decline in employee satisfaction (72% of respondents) and decreased effectiveness of IT staff (68% of respondents).

trac business impact of apm problems
Source: TRAC Research – Business Impact of APM Problems

All in all, TRAC Research shows that companies that do not do APM right, spend up to 46.2 more hours per month caught in the war room trying to solve problems.  You have 46.2 hours of IT Operations headaches a month? Simic and Rosen point directly to APM.

“With an effective APM technology solution in place, IT’s limited time and resources will not be constantly engaged in troubleshooting, tracking issues, and reactively addressing application problems. Instead, APM allows resources to be focused on increasing business productivity and on assignments that innovate and create value for their organization.”