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Turning Tactical IT Into Strategic IT

Keith Bromley

As businesses look to drive more and more value out of the organization, is there a way that IT can help? While the answer could be yes, the problem is time.

Around 41% of enterprise IT departments spend over 50% of their time responding to network and application performance problems

A study conducted by Enterprise Management Associates showed that around 41% of enterprise IT departments spend over 50% of their time responding to network and application performance problems. This leaves precious little time for value-add activities.

While tactical IT activities are necessary, they place a considerable drain on IT resources. What if you could reduce the amount of problem resolution time by just 10%? This would be more time that could be applied to deliver projects that increase customer retention, expand market share, and/or increase revenue. Again, while there is definitely value for tactical IT activities, the value is smaller than the value of strategic IT activities.

The question then becomes, how can you reduce the time you spend on application and network activities so that you can redeploy that time for strategic business tasks?

The answer is to improve your visibility into the network. Organizations need access to data. At the same time, that data is overloading them. According to IBM research, over 90% of all of the data in the world has been created in the last two years. Network visibility allows you to capture and process key pieces of network and application data to: generate business insights for better network and application performance, perform macroscopic troubleshooting tactics, create better security device efficiencies, and implement better compliance practices.

A lack of network visibility (geolocation of users and problems, device type and browser type information, real-time access to network and application performance as it transits across the network, etc.) is behind a lot of IT inefficiency. This results in a longer amount of time to put out troubleshooting fires than was necessary. Flow data, packet data, and performance data can all be combined to quickly create a detailed analysis. With this extra information, you can be more strategic and plan more effectively.

85% of MTTR is the time taken to identify that there is, in fact, an issue

Increased network visibility is also critical when dealing with one of the top IT metrics, mean time to repair (MTTR). Approximately 85% of MTTR is the time taken to identify that there is, in fact, an issue, says Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research.

Even worse, Kerravala says, the MTTR clock starts ticking whether IT knows that there is an issue or not. Reducing this metric not only helps to give you back valuable time, it should help you improve one of your key performance indicators (KPI).

Network visibility can assist in all of these areas. The foundation of network visibility is the visibility architecture. This architecture consists of three element types: taps, network packet brokers, and monitoring tools. Taps are simply passive devices that make a complete copy of the data traversing the network on that particular network segment. The copied data is then sent to a packet broker which allows you to aggregate all of your data, deduplicate it, strip off unnecessary headers or payloads, and then replicate one or more pieces of that data and send it to different monitoring tools. Once the visibility architecture is in place, reductions of MTTR by up to 80% are possible.

Some of the biggest enterprise changes today are cloud computing, shadow IT, and mobile/bring-your-own-device (BYOD). The thread that links these shifts is data handling. Each one, in different ways, enables users to create data from new sources. Network visibility should be a critical component of this shift to reduce your time and money spent on tactical IT activities.

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Turning Tactical IT Into Strategic IT

Keith Bromley

As businesses look to drive more and more value out of the organization, is there a way that IT can help? While the answer could be yes, the problem is time.

Around 41% of enterprise IT departments spend over 50% of their time responding to network and application performance problems

A study conducted by Enterprise Management Associates showed that around 41% of enterprise IT departments spend over 50% of their time responding to network and application performance problems. This leaves precious little time for value-add activities.

While tactical IT activities are necessary, they place a considerable drain on IT resources. What if you could reduce the amount of problem resolution time by just 10%? This would be more time that could be applied to deliver projects that increase customer retention, expand market share, and/or increase revenue. Again, while there is definitely value for tactical IT activities, the value is smaller than the value of strategic IT activities.

The question then becomes, how can you reduce the time you spend on application and network activities so that you can redeploy that time for strategic business tasks?

The answer is to improve your visibility into the network. Organizations need access to data. At the same time, that data is overloading them. According to IBM research, over 90% of all of the data in the world has been created in the last two years. Network visibility allows you to capture and process key pieces of network and application data to: generate business insights for better network and application performance, perform macroscopic troubleshooting tactics, create better security device efficiencies, and implement better compliance practices.

A lack of network visibility (geolocation of users and problems, device type and browser type information, real-time access to network and application performance as it transits across the network, etc.) is behind a lot of IT inefficiency. This results in a longer amount of time to put out troubleshooting fires than was necessary. Flow data, packet data, and performance data can all be combined to quickly create a detailed analysis. With this extra information, you can be more strategic and plan more effectively.

85% of MTTR is the time taken to identify that there is, in fact, an issue

Increased network visibility is also critical when dealing with one of the top IT metrics, mean time to repair (MTTR). Approximately 85% of MTTR is the time taken to identify that there is, in fact, an issue, says Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research.

Even worse, Kerravala says, the MTTR clock starts ticking whether IT knows that there is an issue or not. Reducing this metric not only helps to give you back valuable time, it should help you improve one of your key performance indicators (KPI).

Network visibility can assist in all of these areas. The foundation of network visibility is the visibility architecture. This architecture consists of three element types: taps, network packet brokers, and monitoring tools. Taps are simply passive devices that make a complete copy of the data traversing the network on that particular network segment. The copied data is then sent to a packet broker which allows you to aggregate all of your data, deduplicate it, strip off unnecessary headers or payloads, and then replicate one or more pieces of that data and send it to different monitoring tools. Once the visibility architecture is in place, reductions of MTTR by up to 80% are possible.

Some of the biggest enterprise changes today are cloud computing, shadow IT, and mobile/bring-your-own-device (BYOD). The thread that links these shifts is data handling. Each one, in different ways, enables users to create data from new sources. Network visibility should be a critical component of this shift to reduce your time and money spent on tactical IT activities.

Hot Topics

The Latest

From smart factories and autonomous vehicles to real-time analytics and intelligent building systems, the demand for instant, local data processing is exploding. To meet these needs, organizations are leaning into edge computing. The promise? Faster performance, reduced latency and less strain on centralized infrastructure. But there's a catch: Not every network is ready to support edge deployments ...

Every digital customer interaction, every cloud deployment, and every AI model depends on the same foundation: the ability to see, understand, and act on data in real time ... Recent data from Splunk confirms that 74% of the business leaders believe observability is essential to monitoring critical business processes, and 66% feel it's key to understanding user journeys. Because while the unknown is inevitable, observability makes it manageable. Let's explore why ...

Organizations that perform regular audits and assessments of AI system performance and compliance are over three times more likely to achieve high GenAI value than organizations that do not, according to a survey by Gartner ...

Kubernetes has become the backbone of cloud infrastructure, but it's also one of its biggest cost drivers. Recent research shows that 98% of senior IT leaders say Kubernetes now drives cloud spend, yet 91% still can't optimize it effectively. After years of adoption, most organizations have moved past discovery. They know container sprawl, idle resources and reactive scaling inflate costs. What they don't know is how to fix it ...

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future investment. It's already embedded in how we work — whether through copilots in productivity apps, real-time transcription tools in meetings, or machine learning models fueling analytics and personalization. But while enterprise adoption accelerates, there's one critical area many leaders have yet to examine: Can your network actually support AI at the speed your users expect? ...

The more technology businesses invest in, the more potential attack surfaces they have that can be exploited. Without the right continuity plans in place, the disruptions caused by these attacks can bring operations to a standstill and cause irreparable damage to an organization. It's essential to take the time now to ensure your business has the right tools, processes, and recovery initiatives in place to weather any type of IT disaster that comes up. Here are some effective strategies you can follow to achieve this ...

In today's fast-paced AI landscape, CIOs, IT leaders, and engineers are constantly challenged to manage increasingly complex and interconnected systems. The sheer scale and velocity of data generated by modern infrastructure can be overwhelming, making it difficult to maintain uptime, prevent outages, and create a seamless customer experience. This complexity is magnified by the industry's shift towards agentic AI ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 19, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA explains the cause of the AWS outage in October ... 

The explosion of generative AI and machine learning capabilities has fundamentally changed the conversation around cloud migration. It's no longer just about modernization or cost savings — it's about being able to compete in a market where AI is rapidly becoming table stakes. Companies that can't quickly spin up AI workloads, feed models with data at scale, or experiment with new capabilities are falling behind faster than ever before. But here's what I'm seeing: many organizations want to capitalize on AI, but they're stuck ...

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