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Application Performance: A Hidden Cost of Cloud Computing

In December 2012, Research in Action (on behalf of Compuware) conducted a survey of 468 CIOs and other senior IT professionals from around the world. The survey determined cloud computing to be the top IT investment priority for 2013. No surprises there, as clearly these professionals are being driven by the promised benefits of greater agility, flexibility and time-to-value.

What is surprising is the fact that 79 percent of these professionals expressed concern over the hidden costs of cloud computing, with poor end-user experience resonating as the biggest management worry.

According to the survey, here are the four leading concerns with cloud migration:

- Performance Bottlenecks: (64%) Respondents believe that cloud resources and e-commerce will experience poor performance due to cloud application bottleneck usage.

- Poor End-User Experience: (64%) End users may end up dissatisfied with the cloud performance due to heavy traffic from application usage.

- Reduced Brand Perception: (51%) Customer loyalty may be greatly reduced due to poor experience and poor cloud performance.

- Loss of Revenue: (44%) Companies may lose revenues as a result of poor performance, reduced availability or slow technical troubleshooting services.

Ironically, these responses come at a time when the cloud is increasingly being used to support mission-critical applications like e-commerce. More than 80 percent of the professionals surveyed are either already using cloud-based e-commerce platforms or are planning to do so within the next 12 months.

It used to be that issues like security and cost dominated the list of cloud concerns. But application performance is increasingly making headway as end users grow more demanding. For the average end user, 0.1 seconds is an instantaneous, acceptable response, similar to what they experience with a Google search. As response times increase, interactions begin to slow and dissatisfaction rises.

The impact of a slowdown can be devastating: Amazon has calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. In addition, Google itself found that slowing search response times by just four-tenths of a second would reduce the number of searches by eight million per day – a sizeable amount.

Inherent cloud attributes like on-demand resource provisioning and scalability are designed to increase confidence in the usability of applications and data hosted in the cloud. But the most common mistake that people often make is interpreting availability guarantees as performance guarantees in a cloud computing environment.

Availability shows that a cloud service provider’s servers are up and running – but that’s about it. Service-level agreements (SLAs) based on availability say nothing about the end-user experience, which can be significantly impacted by the cloud – such as, when an organization’s “neighbor” in the cloud experiences an unexpected spike in traffic.

Yet, despite the business critical nature of many cloud applications, our survey found that 73 percent of companies are still using outdated methods like availability measurements to track and manage application performance.

The fact is that most traditional monitoring tools simply don’t work in the cloud. Effectively monitoring and managing modern cloud-based applications and services requires a new approach based on more granular end-user metrics such as response time and page rendering time. This approach must be based in an understanding of the true end-user interaction “on the other side” of the cloud. It must enable cloud customers to directly measure the performance of their cloud service providers and validate SLAs. With this type of approach, cloud customers can be better assured that application performance issues will not undo the benefits of moving to the cloud.

ABOUT Michael Kopp

Michael Kopp is Technology Strategist, Compuware APM Center of Excellence. He has more than 10 years of experience as an architect and developer. Additionally, Kopp specializes in architecture and performance of Big Data and Cloud environments.

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Application Performance: A Hidden Cost of Cloud Computing

In December 2012, Research in Action (on behalf of Compuware) conducted a survey of 468 CIOs and other senior IT professionals from around the world. The survey determined cloud computing to be the top IT investment priority for 2013. No surprises there, as clearly these professionals are being driven by the promised benefits of greater agility, flexibility and time-to-value.

What is surprising is the fact that 79 percent of these professionals expressed concern over the hidden costs of cloud computing, with poor end-user experience resonating as the biggest management worry.

According to the survey, here are the four leading concerns with cloud migration:

- Performance Bottlenecks: (64%) Respondents believe that cloud resources and e-commerce will experience poor performance due to cloud application bottleneck usage.

- Poor End-User Experience: (64%) End users may end up dissatisfied with the cloud performance due to heavy traffic from application usage.

- Reduced Brand Perception: (51%) Customer loyalty may be greatly reduced due to poor experience and poor cloud performance.

- Loss of Revenue: (44%) Companies may lose revenues as a result of poor performance, reduced availability or slow technical troubleshooting services.

Ironically, these responses come at a time when the cloud is increasingly being used to support mission-critical applications like e-commerce. More than 80 percent of the professionals surveyed are either already using cloud-based e-commerce platforms or are planning to do so within the next 12 months.

It used to be that issues like security and cost dominated the list of cloud concerns. But application performance is increasingly making headway as end users grow more demanding. For the average end user, 0.1 seconds is an instantaneous, acceptable response, similar to what they experience with a Google search. As response times increase, interactions begin to slow and dissatisfaction rises.

The impact of a slowdown can be devastating: Amazon has calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. In addition, Google itself found that slowing search response times by just four-tenths of a second would reduce the number of searches by eight million per day – a sizeable amount.

Inherent cloud attributes like on-demand resource provisioning and scalability are designed to increase confidence in the usability of applications and data hosted in the cloud. But the most common mistake that people often make is interpreting availability guarantees as performance guarantees in a cloud computing environment.

Availability shows that a cloud service provider’s servers are up and running – but that’s about it. Service-level agreements (SLAs) based on availability say nothing about the end-user experience, which can be significantly impacted by the cloud – such as, when an organization’s “neighbor” in the cloud experiences an unexpected spike in traffic.

Yet, despite the business critical nature of many cloud applications, our survey found that 73 percent of companies are still using outdated methods like availability measurements to track and manage application performance.

The fact is that most traditional monitoring tools simply don’t work in the cloud. Effectively monitoring and managing modern cloud-based applications and services requires a new approach based on more granular end-user metrics such as response time and page rendering time. This approach must be based in an understanding of the true end-user interaction “on the other side” of the cloud. It must enable cloud customers to directly measure the performance of their cloud service providers and validate SLAs. With this type of approach, cloud customers can be better assured that application performance issues will not undo the benefits of moving to the cloud.

ABOUT Michael Kopp

Michael Kopp is Technology Strategist, Compuware APM Center of Excellence. He has more than 10 years of experience as an architect and developer. Additionally, Kopp specializes in architecture and performance of Big Data and Cloud environments.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

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In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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