In 2013, TRAC Research completed studies in five major areas of coverage which includes insights from 2,000+ organizations (a combination of survey data and live interviews). Some of the technologies covered in this research include:

- Application performance monitoring

- Network performance monitoring

- Web and user experience monitoring and testing

- Systems management

This research resulted in more than 1,000 unique data points collected. Here is a summary of some of the key trends identified:

New Technology Purchases Are More Centered Around Addressing Business Challenges

64% of organizations reported that the impact of business users on IT purchases has increased over the last 12 months. As a result, the lines between different technology classes are becoming more blurry and organizations are: 1) looking for vendors to create a better business case for deploying their technologies; 2) evaluating solutions based on the role that they play in closing visibility gaps, as opposed to what technology “bucket” these solutions fall into (APM, NPM, BSM, etc.).

Analytics Are Making the Major Difference Across Each of the IT Performance Monitoring Markets

81% of organizations reported that the amount of performance data that they are collecting increased over the last 12 months. However, these organizations are reporting that the usability of this data is one of the key challenges they are facing.

Leveraging Single Source Data for Performance and Security

Organizations are increasingly looking to improve usability of what traditionally has been IT performance data and apply it to different functional areas such as security, compliance or change management.

Consolidation of Monitoring Tools

63% of organizations reported that time spent on correlating data from different sources is the key challenge for usability of IT performance monitoring tools.

Importance of Time to Value as Selection Criteria

73% of organizations reported that time-to-value is the key selection criteria for application performance monitoring (APM) solutions, while 65% of organizations reported the same for network performance monitoring (NPM) solutions.

Changes in Organizational Approaches – Leading with the Business Service

TRAC's research recorded a 64% increase in the number of organizations that have a dedicated job role or department in charge of IT service delivery over the last 18 months. This shows a major organizational change as more organizations are taking a user-centric vs. infrastructure centric approach for managing IT performance.

Deployment and Pricing Models Becoming Key Selection Criteria

More than 50% of organizations reported that deployment methods and pricing models are key selection criteria when deploying IT performance management solutions.

End-User Experience Becoming a Focal Point on Management Strategies

TRAC's research across areas such as APM, NPM, Web Performance and even WAN Optimization, shows that the quality of user experience is the key metric that organizations are using to evaluate their performance.

Going Beyond Dashboards and Reporting

Organizations are reporting that they are looking for more automation from their performance management tools and also for their IT monitoring tools to provide more capabilities for solving their operational and business issues, as opposed to just reporting performance levels.

Virtualization Becoming Another Management Silo

TRAC’s research shows that visibility into the performance of IT services declined for 38% of organizations after conducting virtualization projects.

Web and Cloud Experience Monitoring Becoming More Critical

61% of organizations reported that their visibility into the quality of user experience declined after deploying public cloud services. Also, organizations are reporting that Web Browser is the #1 blind spot for monitoring application performance.

Monitoring IT Services for Mobile Users

Organizations are reporting that visibility into the performance for mobile users is the #1 challenge for Web experience monitoring. Also, the research shows that 68% of organizations are interested in deploying dedicated capabilities for monitoring the performance of services delivered to mobile devices.

Major performance problems are not being solved

More than 50% of organizations are reporting that they are still struggling with: 1) troubleshooting performance issues in a timely manner; 2) proactively preventing performance problems.

Major Business Impact from IT Performance Management Initiatives

On average, organizations are losing $72,000 per minute of unplanned network downtime, while 48% of organizations reported that, on average, they spend more than 60 minutes on repairing performance issues – per incident. Organizations that are able to effectively address key performance challenges are experiencing measurable business benefits, allowing them to better align their IT initiatives to support their key business goals.

ABOUT Bojan Simic

Bojan Simic is President and Principal Analyst at TRAC Research, a market research and analyst firm that specializes in IT performance management. As an industry analyst, Simic has interviewed more than 2,000 IT and business professionals from end-user organizations and has published more than 50 research reports. His domain knowledge includes insights into end user experiences, best-practices in deploying solutions for IT performance management, and strategies of related solution providers.

Prior to joining TRAC Research, Simic was a lead analyst for Network and Application Performance Management research at Aberdeen Group. He is frequently quoted in leading industry publications and has presented his research findings at more than 30 market facing events.

Simic's coverage area at TRAC Research includes application and network monitoring, WAN management and acceleration, cloud and virtualization management, business service management and managed services.

Bojan holds a BA in Economics from Belgrade University in Belgrade, Serbia and an MBA from McCallum Graduate School of Business at Bentley University.

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www.new.trac-research.com/

5 Key Challenges for Proactive Application Performance Management