2008 State of the Network Study

Network Managers Spend 25 Days Per Year Diagnosing Performance Issues

Annual State of the Network Global Study from Network Instruments reveals serious network analysis issues for three-quarters of respondents; VoIP confidence increasing

Despite the many new tools for monitoring and optimizing application performance, the research revealed 75 percent of network professionals continue to cite "identifying the source of a problem" as their primary troubleshooting concern, marking a 25 percent increase from 2007. Performance problems are also on the rise with over two-thirds of respondents spending at least 25 days per year determining the cause of these issues.

Over the last two years, while IT staff purchased new tools to optimize applications and traffic, the amount of time spent troubleshooting performance problems increased. It's clear that relying on new tools or increasing bandwidth doesn't address the performance problems. These problems will continue to grow as companies implement new technologies and applications on their networks. Without visibility into these applications, performance will continue to suffer.

The comprehensive study involved nearly 600 CIOs, network engineers, and IT managers from countries worldwide, to determine the greatest challenges organizations faced in troubleshooting application performance as well as the amount of time spent at various points in the process. The results are based on surveys completed by 592 network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. Responses were collected from January 21 – February 25, 2008, through network technology seminars, interviews, and online surveys.

Study Highlights:

App performance headaches: Over a third of respondents cited bandwidth consumption issues as the top offender, while 32 percent selected application latency and delay issues as second most common.

Intermittent errors: Thirty-two percent felt their organization needed to improve its ability to troubleshoot sporadic performance errors.

Security and compliance: Three quarters say these issues continue to be a problem.


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Study