Skip to main content

Lack of Infrastructure Visibility Puts Businesses at Risk

Len Rosenthal

Most enterprises lack the complete visibility required to avoid business-impacting application outages and slowdowns – resulting in nearly 90 percent of enterprises being unable to consistently meet service level agreements (SLAs) for their business-critical applications, according to a recent survey conducted by Dimensional Research and Virtual Instruments. This research indicates a serious gap in IT operations teams' ability to monitor their enterprises' highly virtualized, multi-vendor hybrid data center environments, and the results show that this lack of visibility is significantly impacting business.

Blind Spots, Slowdowns and Outages Abound

59 percent of application outages and performance problems are related to infrastructure

The reality is that large enterprises endure a substantial number of application outages and performance issues every year, and an overwhelming number of those surveyed indicated that a slowdown impacts businesses just as much as a full outage.

86 percent of users experience two or more significant outages a year, with 61 percent suffering from four or more in the same period.

59 percent of application outages and performance problems are related to infrastructure, which begs the question: why can't IT teams see these problems coming, and what's getting in the way of timely resolution?

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

There are many dozens of infrastructure and application monitoring tools available to enterprises, so why does this visibility gap still exist?

This research showed that it's not necessarily a lack of tools that may be causing the problem, but rather the combination of too many silo-specific tools. In fact, more than 70 percent of respondents use more than five IT infrastructure monitoring tools, and 15 percent use more than 20!

But despite this plethora of tools, 54 percent of companies lack full visibility into their infrastructure and application workload behavior, and 42 percent of companies operate primarily in "reactive mode" when managing their infrastructure.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

When it comes to the modern enterprise, there's no single internal team that can accurately manage and assess application performance requirements. However, less than half of enterprises take a collaborative approach to establishing performance requirements for new data center infrastructure. With no collective understanding of how applications relate to the underlying infrastructure, the resulting blind spots cause chain reactions that leave enterprises highly exposed.

79 percent of application outages and other issues directly impact customers

Nearly 40 percent of enterprises say that performance issues related to infrastructure are the most challenging to resolve, and when you consider that 79 percent of application outages and other issues directly impact customers, there just isn't room for guessing.

Deeper Insights Are the Key

The lack of visibility and proactive infrastructure and application management contributes to a lack of confidence from IT teams and their executives. In fact, 62 percent doubt that their current infrastructure would be able to meet their projected performance needs in the next two years, and two-thirds of respondents feel that they're often held personally responsible for application outages and slowdowns.

In addition, with an increasing number of applications being deployed in public clouds, nearly 65 percent are concerned about the perceived value of the internal IT infrastructure team to the business.

As discouraging as these findings may seem, the numbers indicate a strong opportunity for engineering, operations and application teams to come together and gain a deeper understanding of the impact of their applications on the underlying infrastructure, and visa versa. Since applications and infrastructure are intertwined to the point where they can no longer be viewed as distinct entities, an infrastructure monitoring approach that understands application workload behavior is essential to performance assurance.

The bottom line is that in today's highly competitive business environment, enterprises cannot afford to test their customers' limited patience by having an unacceptable number of application outages or slowdowns.

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 ...

Image
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 ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Lack of Infrastructure Visibility Puts Businesses at Risk

Len Rosenthal

Most enterprises lack the complete visibility required to avoid business-impacting application outages and slowdowns – resulting in nearly 90 percent of enterprises being unable to consistently meet service level agreements (SLAs) for their business-critical applications, according to a recent survey conducted by Dimensional Research and Virtual Instruments. This research indicates a serious gap in IT operations teams' ability to monitor their enterprises' highly virtualized, multi-vendor hybrid data center environments, and the results show that this lack of visibility is significantly impacting business.

Blind Spots, Slowdowns and Outages Abound

59 percent of application outages and performance problems are related to infrastructure

The reality is that large enterprises endure a substantial number of application outages and performance issues every year, and an overwhelming number of those surveyed indicated that a slowdown impacts businesses just as much as a full outage.

86 percent of users experience two or more significant outages a year, with 61 percent suffering from four or more in the same period.

59 percent of application outages and performance problems are related to infrastructure, which begs the question: why can't IT teams see these problems coming, and what's getting in the way of timely resolution?

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

There are many dozens of infrastructure and application monitoring tools available to enterprises, so why does this visibility gap still exist?

This research showed that it's not necessarily a lack of tools that may be causing the problem, but rather the combination of too many silo-specific tools. In fact, more than 70 percent of respondents use more than five IT infrastructure monitoring tools, and 15 percent use more than 20!

But despite this plethora of tools, 54 percent of companies lack full visibility into their infrastructure and application workload behavior, and 42 percent of companies operate primarily in "reactive mode" when managing their infrastructure.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

When it comes to the modern enterprise, there's no single internal team that can accurately manage and assess application performance requirements. However, less than half of enterprises take a collaborative approach to establishing performance requirements for new data center infrastructure. With no collective understanding of how applications relate to the underlying infrastructure, the resulting blind spots cause chain reactions that leave enterprises highly exposed.

79 percent of application outages and other issues directly impact customers

Nearly 40 percent of enterprises say that performance issues related to infrastructure are the most challenging to resolve, and when you consider that 79 percent of application outages and other issues directly impact customers, there just isn't room for guessing.

Deeper Insights Are the Key

The lack of visibility and proactive infrastructure and application management contributes to a lack of confidence from IT teams and their executives. In fact, 62 percent doubt that their current infrastructure would be able to meet their projected performance needs in the next two years, and two-thirds of respondents feel that they're often held personally responsible for application outages and slowdowns.

In addition, with an increasing number of applications being deployed in public clouds, nearly 65 percent are concerned about the perceived value of the internal IT infrastructure team to the business.

As discouraging as these findings may seem, the numbers indicate a strong opportunity for engineering, operations and application teams to come together and gain a deeper understanding of the impact of their applications on the underlying infrastructure, and visa versa. Since applications and infrastructure are intertwined to the point where they can no longer be viewed as distinct entities, an infrastructure monitoring approach that understands application workload behavior is essential to performance assurance.

The bottom line is that in today's highly competitive business environment, enterprises cannot afford to test their customers' limited patience by having an unacceptable number of application outages or slowdowns.

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 ...

Image
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 ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

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 ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...