Manufacturers are struggling to deal with increasingly complex IT estates, as 83% of firms report a rise in IT complexity driven by more users, increased locations, new applications and adoption of cloud computing, according to new research from Ipanema Technologies and Loudhouse.
Set against this backdrop is a concerning rise in IT performance problems, with a third of manufacturers reporting that application downtime is on the rise, compared to just 20% of firms that have seen a reduction in application downtime over the past 12 months.
IT leaders at manufacturing firms are in agreement that application performance remains critical to their bottom line, as research suggests poorly performing IT applications result in an average reduction in overall revenue of 20%. Common business problems caused by poorly functioning IT systems over the past 12 months have included: products being shipped late (42%), lower employee productivity (42%) and customer complaints (38%).
Today, manufacturers are struggling to address these challenges as 87% of IT leaders agree that guaranteeing application performance is a priority but only 27% have confidence in their company’s ability to rollout new applications quickly and easily. A large majority (70%) of firms also confirm they do not have confidence in the ability of their firm to troubleshoot application performance problems when things do go wrong.
Manufacturing firms are facing a perfect storm of IT challenges. The business is asking CIOs to do more with less while demanding the benefits offered by new advanced applications like Unified Communications, cloud applications or Video Conferencing, which can be transformative for collaborative product design. Our research shows that as IT estates become more complex, application performance problems are on the rise and this is costing manufacturers.
The sector’s top three IT objectives include productivity improvement (70%), cost reduction (71%) and implementing new applications such as Unified Communications (66%), all of which can potentially be jeopardized by networked applications that suffer slowness or non-responsiveness. In terms of specific IT projects, the sector is heavily focused on virtualization (69%) and supply chain IT projects (60%).
As manufacturers embrace trends like Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and BYOD, IT leaders need to consider a strategy for achieving an "application performance guarantee". If not, they ultimately risk falling productivity as frustrated users find applications are increasingly slow or unavailable with the Wide Area Network struggling to handle competing demands.
About the Research: More than 400 interviews were conducted with IT decision-makers involved in networking in manufacturing organizations. The respondents’ organizations had at least 1000 employees and at least 10 sites globally linked via a Wide Area Network (WAN). Interviews were carried out in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux, Switzerland and the USA. Respondents completed a survey in H2 2014. Research was undertaken by Loudhouse, an independent research agency based in London.
Béatrice Piquer-Durand is VP of Marketing at Ipanema Technologies.
The Latest
In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 5, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the network source of truth ...
A vast majority (89%) of organizations have rapidly expanded their technology in the past few years and three quarters (76%) say it's brought with it increased "chaos" that they have to manage, according to Situation Report 2024: Managing Technology Chaos from Software AG ...
In 2024 the number one challenge facing IT teams is a lack of skilled workers, and many are turning to automation as an answer, according to IT Trends: 2024 Industry Report ...
Organizations are continuing to embrace multicloud environments and cloud-native architectures to enable rapid transformation and deliver secure innovation. However, despite the speed, scale, and agility enabled by these modern cloud ecosystems, organizations are struggling to manage the explosion of data they create, according to The state of observability 2024: Overcoming complexity through AI-driven analytics and automation strategies, a report from Dynatrace ...
Organizations recognize the value of observability, but only 10% of them are actually practicing full observability of their applications and infrastructure. This is among the key findings from the recently completed Logz.io 2024 Observability Pulse Survey and Report ...
Businesses must adopt a comprehensive Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) strategy, says Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a leading IT analyst research firm. This strategy is crucial to bridge the significant observability gap within today's complex IT infrastructures. The recommendation is particularly timely, given that 99% of enterprises are expanding their use of the Internet as a primary connectivity conduit while facing challenges due to the inefficiency of multiple, disjointed monitoring tools, according to Modern Enterprises Must Boost Observability with Internet Performance Monitoring, a new report from EMA and Catchpoint ...
Choosing the right approach is critical with cloud monitoring in hybrid environments. Otherwise, you may drive up costs with features you don’t need and risk diminishing the visibility of your on-premises IT ...
Consumers ranked the marketing strategies and missteps that most significantly impact brand trust, which 73% say is their biggest motivator to share first-party data, according to The Rules of the Marketing Game, a 2023 report from Pantheon ...
Digital experience monitoring is the practice of monitoring and analyzing the complete digital user journey of your applications, websites, APIs, and other digital services. It involves tracking the performance of your web application from the perspective of the end user, providing detailed insights on user experience, app performance, and customer satisfaction ...
