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98% of Cloud Deployments Experience Performance Issues

Jerry Melnick

A full 98% of cloud deployments experience some type of performance issue every year, according to a new survey by SIOS Technology, in partnership with ActualTech Media Research.

The survey was designed to understand current challenges and trends related to the state of performance and high availability for mission-critical applications in small, medium and large companies. A total of 390 IT professionals and decision-makers responded, collectively representing a cross-section those responsible for managing databases, infrastructure, architecture, cloud services and software development. Tier-1 applications explicitly identified include Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and SAP/HANA.

There are some clear trends and a few surprises that we didn't see coming, and that might surprise you as well:

■ Small companies are leading the way to the public cloud with 54% planning to move more than half their mission-critical applications there by the end of 2018, which compares to 42% of large companies

■ For companies of all sizes, having complete control over the application environment was cited by 60% of the respondents as a key reason for why their mission-critical workloads remain on premises

■ Most (86%) organizations are using some form of failover clustering or other high availability mechanism for their mission-critical applications

■ Almost as many (95%) report having experienced a failure in their failover provisions

It's evident that organizations are finally moving their critical applications to the cloud, and at a greater pace than we could have imagined a few years ago. But they're still in the early days of adoption, placing mature operations a few years away. Here are some more details.

Misery Loves Company

A mere 2% of respondents claimed they never experience any application performance issues that ever affect any end users. The rest of us mere mortals claim to experience such issues, on average, daily (18%), 2-3 times per week (17%), once per week (10%), 2-3 times per month (15%), once per month (11%), 3-5 times per year (18%) or only once per year (8%).

The responses were reasonably consistent among Decision Makers, IT Staff, and Data & Development Staff with one notable exception: Decision Makers perceive a lower occurrence of performance issues than staff does. Nearly half (46%) of Decision Makers responded that performance issues occur 3-5 times per year or less (compared to 23-25% for staff), and only 11% responded that issues occur daily (compared to 20-21% for staff).

Rapid Response to the Rescue

One possible explanation for this apparent discrepancy is IT Staff being made aware of problems affecting performance with an automated alert, followed by a rapid response to find and fix the cause.

When asked about high availability provisions failing (something that is certain to affect performance!), 77% learn of the problem via an alert from monitoring tools, while 39% learn from a user complaint. (Note that multiple responses were permitted.)

As for remediation, it takes more than 5 hours to fix a problem only 3% of the time. Nearly a quarter (23%) are fixed in less than an hour, over half (56%) are fixed in 1-3 hours, and 18% are fixed in 3-5 hours. Small companies are able to resolve problems more quickly (31% in less than an hour) than large ones (only 11% in less than an hour), likely because the former utilizes the public cloud more extensively and has less complex configurations.

Culprits in the Cloud

When asked about the cause of performance issues that arise in the cloud, the main culprits are the application or the database being used, which together accounted for 64% of the issues. It is important to note that this question did not distinguish between who is responsible for the managing the application and/or database, which would likely be the cloud service provider for a managed service. Additional causes include issues with the service provider (17%) or the infrastructure (15%). In 4% of the cases, the issue remained a mystery.

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98% of Cloud Deployments Experience Performance Issues

Jerry Melnick

A full 98% of cloud deployments experience some type of performance issue every year, according to a new survey by SIOS Technology, in partnership with ActualTech Media Research.

The survey was designed to understand current challenges and trends related to the state of performance and high availability for mission-critical applications in small, medium and large companies. A total of 390 IT professionals and decision-makers responded, collectively representing a cross-section those responsible for managing databases, infrastructure, architecture, cloud services and software development. Tier-1 applications explicitly identified include Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and SAP/HANA.

There are some clear trends and a few surprises that we didn't see coming, and that might surprise you as well:

■ Small companies are leading the way to the public cloud with 54% planning to move more than half their mission-critical applications there by the end of 2018, which compares to 42% of large companies

■ For companies of all sizes, having complete control over the application environment was cited by 60% of the respondents as a key reason for why their mission-critical workloads remain on premises

■ Most (86%) organizations are using some form of failover clustering or other high availability mechanism for their mission-critical applications

■ Almost as many (95%) report having experienced a failure in their failover provisions

It's evident that organizations are finally moving their critical applications to the cloud, and at a greater pace than we could have imagined a few years ago. But they're still in the early days of adoption, placing mature operations a few years away. Here are some more details.

Misery Loves Company

A mere 2% of respondents claimed they never experience any application performance issues that ever affect any end users. The rest of us mere mortals claim to experience such issues, on average, daily (18%), 2-3 times per week (17%), once per week (10%), 2-3 times per month (15%), once per month (11%), 3-5 times per year (18%) or only once per year (8%).

The responses were reasonably consistent among Decision Makers, IT Staff, and Data & Development Staff with one notable exception: Decision Makers perceive a lower occurrence of performance issues than staff does. Nearly half (46%) of Decision Makers responded that performance issues occur 3-5 times per year or less (compared to 23-25% for staff), and only 11% responded that issues occur daily (compared to 20-21% for staff).

Rapid Response to the Rescue

One possible explanation for this apparent discrepancy is IT Staff being made aware of problems affecting performance with an automated alert, followed by a rapid response to find and fix the cause.

When asked about high availability provisions failing (something that is certain to affect performance!), 77% learn of the problem via an alert from monitoring tools, while 39% learn from a user complaint. (Note that multiple responses were permitted.)

As for remediation, it takes more than 5 hours to fix a problem only 3% of the time. Nearly a quarter (23%) are fixed in less than an hour, over half (56%) are fixed in 1-3 hours, and 18% are fixed in 3-5 hours. Small companies are able to resolve problems more quickly (31% in less than an hour) than large ones (only 11% in less than an hour), likely because the former utilizes the public cloud more extensively and has less complex configurations.

Culprits in the Cloud

When asked about the cause of performance issues that arise in the cloud, the main culprits are the application or the database being used, which together accounted for 64% of the issues. It is important to note that this question did not distinguish between who is responsible for the managing the application and/or database, which would likely be the cloud service provider for a managed service. Additional causes include issues with the service provider (17%) or the infrastructure (15%). In 4% of the cases, the issue remained a mystery.

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...