2012 State of the Network Study

Cloud and Bandwidth Demands Challenge IT Teams

Annual State of the Network Global Study Offers IT Management Insights

Results suggest a potential management storm as IT teams face significant monitoring challenges from multiple forms of cloud computing, as well as substantially increased bandwidth demands.

While IT teams embrace cloud services and video conferencing as a way to increase cost savings and business flexibility, these technologies introduce new components and environments which make ensuring positive end-user experience all the more challenging. The reported lack of monitoring tools, quality metrics, and visibility create serious obstacles that prevent IT from effectively managing performance and jeopardize costly technology investments.

The results were based on responses by network engineers, IT directors, and CIOs in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and South America. Responses were collected from October 22, 2011 to January 3, 2012.

Study Highlights:

Application challenges: Eighty-three percent most challenged by identifying the source of app issues.

And video for all: Seventy percent to implement videoconferencing in the next year. A quarter expect video to consume half of all bandwidth in 12 months.

Apps move to cloud: Sixty percent anticipate half of their apps to run on the cloud over the next year.