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5 IT Operations Challenges – and 1 Main Cause

A recent survey of IT Operations executives found the following to be the most impactful challenges facing their teams:

1. Too much time spent resolving business-impacting application outages or slowdowns

IT Operations teams spend too many work hours resolving application performance problems. The biggest single opportunity to reduce this resource drain is to streamline the process of localizing the problem – in short, find the actual problem faster.

The Mean Time to Resolve issues (MTTR) is the primary measure that Operations teams use to determine their effectiveness in dealing with problems. Whenever Operations teams speak about management projects, the ultimate goal is to reduce MTTR.

Forrester Research’s Evelyn Oehrlich breaks down MTTR as the sum of four sub-components:

- The time it takes to detect a problem (measured by the MTTI or “Mean Time to Identify”)

- The time it takes to isolate the problem (measured by the MTTK or “Mean Time to Know”)

- The time it takes to implement the fix (measured by MTTF or “Mean Time to Fix”)

- The time it takes to verify that the fix is working (measured by MTTV or “Mean Time to Verify”)


Image removed.

As shown in the above graphic, the best opportunity to reduce the overall time to resolve issues is to cut the time spent isolating the root cause of the problem. Understanding that quickly finding where a problem occurred has the most potential for improvement, the focus should be on tools that isolate issues across the infrastructure, as opposed to solving more issues on specific platforms.

2. Too many Experts are required to help with application incidents

Having too many people spending time on bridge calls is a well-documented complaint. But really it is a symptom of a process problem. Bridge calls are attended by specialists – experts from the web tier, the database, the application server, etc. They are all on the same call to facilitate a broken process – that of using people to isolate the source of an application problem.

Management tools that provide a holistic view of application performance can eliminate the need to assemble the large team, and instead allow a single individual to isolate the problem component. With the source of the problem isolated, that individual can then engage only with the appropriate expert.

3. Problems are only discovered when users complain about them

As an Operations executive, I have a rule for my team that I never be surprised. I’m also realistic enough to know that sometimes things will go wrong. In an IT environment, outages will happen. The key is to not be surprised by the outages. This means proactive monitoring of applications – not just at the individual component level, but across the entire application infrastructure.

In today’s complex environments, relying on resource monitoring of individual servers is a sure-fire path to unpleasant surprises.

4. Management Tools can’t support the Mix of Technologies that Make up Apps

Management tools are built to address specific problems. Many of the APM tools in the field today were built to handle Java and .Net application code manipulation. These capabilities are important, but they don’t address problems that originate outside the application code. Enterprise applications of today are complicated animals – often consisting of several different discrete component types. IT Operations teams need to ensure that their management tools can identify and address the most common sources of application failures.

5. Implementation of mass virtualization, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

Virtualization and Private Cloud have become mainstream components of today’s application environments, and Hybrid Cloud is expected to be very big in 2013. Disconnecting the applications from the infrastructure specification creates a management visibility gap as to how systems are working together to deliver the business services. IT Operations teams need tools that can provide a complete application view across all these environments to be able to avoid the management blind spots.

One Major Cause: Application Complexity

The key difference in today’s applications from those running even 3 years ago is growing complexity. New technologies allow for more sophisticated enterprise applications - the days of applications being made up of a web server and a database are gone. Today’s applications feature a broad mixture of technologies and platforms, all with specialized functions and specialized management tools.

It’s this massive complexity that creates the other challenges:

- Today’s applications employ infrastructure components that alter the transaction paths and topology layout of applications on the fly, making it difficult or impossible to understand how transactions, applications and infrastructure work together.

- The resulting visibility gaps require experts for each platform to be available, just to TRY to understand (as a team) where applications and transactions go.

- Rapid change means that management tools struggle to keep up with the pace of change in technologies. In some cases, the platforms are so new that traditional management tools have no effective way of seeing even basic information.

- Finally, it is this dynamic complexity that makes it difficult for either IT Operations team members or full SWAT teams to solve problems when they occur. There are simply too many moving parts, too many new technologies, all put together in an unknown way (to the Operations Team) to deliver the desired business service.

The best way to deal with these challenges is to take a service-oriented approach to application service delivery. IT Operations teams that focus on how infrastructure performance impacts end-user service levels and use tools that manage transactions, applications, and infrastructure together will be able to overcome the 5 major challenges – cutting through those management gaps to provide true service management.

ABOUT Vic Nyman

Vic Nyman is the co-founder and COO of BlueStripe Software. Nyman has over 20 years of experience in systems management and APM and has held leadership positions at Wily Technology, IBM Tivoli, and Relicore/Symantec.

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5 IT Operations Challenges – and 1 Main Cause

A recent survey of IT Operations executives found the following to be the most impactful challenges facing their teams:

1. Too much time spent resolving business-impacting application outages or slowdowns

IT Operations teams spend too many work hours resolving application performance problems. The biggest single opportunity to reduce this resource drain is to streamline the process of localizing the problem – in short, find the actual problem faster.

The Mean Time to Resolve issues (MTTR) is the primary measure that Operations teams use to determine their effectiveness in dealing with problems. Whenever Operations teams speak about management projects, the ultimate goal is to reduce MTTR.

Forrester Research’s Evelyn Oehrlich breaks down MTTR as the sum of four sub-components:

- The time it takes to detect a problem (measured by the MTTI or “Mean Time to Identify”)

- The time it takes to isolate the problem (measured by the MTTK or “Mean Time to Know”)

- The time it takes to implement the fix (measured by MTTF or “Mean Time to Fix”)

- The time it takes to verify that the fix is working (measured by MTTV or “Mean Time to Verify”)


Image removed.

As shown in the above graphic, the best opportunity to reduce the overall time to resolve issues is to cut the time spent isolating the root cause of the problem. Understanding that quickly finding where a problem occurred has the most potential for improvement, the focus should be on tools that isolate issues across the infrastructure, as opposed to solving more issues on specific platforms.

2. Too many Experts are required to help with application incidents

Having too many people spending time on bridge calls is a well-documented complaint. But really it is a symptom of a process problem. Bridge calls are attended by specialists – experts from the web tier, the database, the application server, etc. They are all on the same call to facilitate a broken process – that of using people to isolate the source of an application problem.

Management tools that provide a holistic view of application performance can eliminate the need to assemble the large team, and instead allow a single individual to isolate the problem component. With the source of the problem isolated, that individual can then engage only with the appropriate expert.

3. Problems are only discovered when users complain about them

As an Operations executive, I have a rule for my team that I never be surprised. I’m also realistic enough to know that sometimes things will go wrong. In an IT environment, outages will happen. The key is to not be surprised by the outages. This means proactive monitoring of applications – not just at the individual component level, but across the entire application infrastructure.

In today’s complex environments, relying on resource monitoring of individual servers is a sure-fire path to unpleasant surprises.

4. Management Tools can’t support the Mix of Technologies that Make up Apps

Management tools are built to address specific problems. Many of the APM tools in the field today were built to handle Java and .Net application code manipulation. These capabilities are important, but they don’t address problems that originate outside the application code. Enterprise applications of today are complicated animals – often consisting of several different discrete component types. IT Operations teams need to ensure that their management tools can identify and address the most common sources of application failures.

5. Implementation of mass virtualization, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

Virtualization and Private Cloud have become mainstream components of today’s application environments, and Hybrid Cloud is expected to be very big in 2013. Disconnecting the applications from the infrastructure specification creates a management visibility gap as to how systems are working together to deliver the business services. IT Operations teams need tools that can provide a complete application view across all these environments to be able to avoid the management blind spots.

One Major Cause: Application Complexity

The key difference in today’s applications from those running even 3 years ago is growing complexity. New technologies allow for more sophisticated enterprise applications - the days of applications being made up of a web server and a database are gone. Today’s applications feature a broad mixture of technologies and platforms, all with specialized functions and specialized management tools.

It’s this massive complexity that creates the other challenges:

- Today’s applications employ infrastructure components that alter the transaction paths and topology layout of applications on the fly, making it difficult or impossible to understand how transactions, applications and infrastructure work together.

- The resulting visibility gaps require experts for each platform to be available, just to TRY to understand (as a team) where applications and transactions go.

- Rapid change means that management tools struggle to keep up with the pace of change in technologies. In some cases, the platforms are so new that traditional management tools have no effective way of seeing even basic information.

- Finally, it is this dynamic complexity that makes it difficult for either IT Operations team members or full SWAT teams to solve problems when they occur. There are simply too many moving parts, too many new technologies, all put together in an unknown way (to the Operations Team) to deliver the desired business service.

The best way to deal with these challenges is to take a service-oriented approach to application service delivery. IT Operations teams that focus on how infrastructure performance impacts end-user service levels and use tools that manage transactions, applications, and infrastructure together will be able to overcome the 5 major challenges – cutting through those management gaps to provide true service management.

ABOUT Vic Nyman

Vic Nyman is the co-founder and COO of BlueStripe Software. Nyman has over 20 years of experience in systems management and APM and has held leadership positions at Wily Technology, IBM Tivoli, and Relicore/Symantec.

Hot Topics

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Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 5 covers the infrastructure and hardware supporting AI ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 4 covers advancements in AI technology ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 2 covers the challenges presented by AI, as well as solutions to those problems ...

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025 ...

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

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Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

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Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

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Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...