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IT, businesses not in sync on app performance

By , Portals editor
Africa , 03 Feb 2016

IT, businesses not in sync on app performance

Non-performing apps are hurting businesses and there is a clear disconnect between what executives expect and want, and what they are actually receiving in operations.

According to the results of a Global App Performance Survey 2015, initiated by Riverbed Technology, 98% of the top brass at companies understand that optimal app infrastructure performance is critical, and 94% of executives say the poor performance of enterprise applications has negatively impacted their work, while 59% say it impacts their work at least weekly.

And this is also what is happening on the ground across businesses in Africa, says Wimpie van Rensburg, Country Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Riverbed Technology. "The impact on revenue from optimal app performance can be significant," he says.

"Irregular app performance issues will mean a loss for the business," van Rensburg pointed out, explaining that poor app performance doesn't just refer to a state of being down, it could also be intermittently slow. This, he says, reaffirms the notion that in today's market 'slow is the new down'.

While optimised app performance is said to benefit businesses by improving employee productivity, saving on time and cost, and improving customer satisfaction, the opposite is equally true, claims Riverbed Technology: the pitfalls of poor app performance include dissatisfied clients, contract delays and missed critical deadlines.

In the dark

According to the survey many executives feel they are 'working in the dark' when it comes to technical issues regarding app performance - 94% believe there is a disconnect between IT and business teams.

The study found that whilst companies universally agree that business performance relies on application performance, nine out of ten organisations suffer from poor performance on a regular basis.

According to Riverbed Technology one cause of this performance gap is the move to hybrid IT. Migrating apps to the cloud brings agility and cost benefits, but, with other apps still on-premises, it also brings complexity.

With apps, data and users literally everywhere, the work of optimising and delivering great app performance has gotten much tougher for IT organisations. But you can't control what you can't see. And in order to close the performance gap, having a clear line of sight into how the apps are performing – and how the end user experience is being impacted – has also become a business imperative, the company adds.

"The results of the survey reflect what we're hearing every day from IT leaders who are looking to deliver superior application performance in the midst of rapidly evolving, highly complex and hybrid IT environments," said Jerry M. Kennelly, Chairman and CEO, Riverbed. "With apps, data and end users everywhere today, companies need end-to-end application visibility, optimisation, and control everywhere as well to close the performance gap. "

Cloud migration

While the company also acknowledges that businesses in Africa are showing more interest in migrating apps to the cloud, they are susceptible to the same global challenges.

According to the survey, nearly all (95%) of respondents use cloud-based enterprise applications in their work, 79% say their company's use of cloud-based enterprise applications will increase over the next two years, and 73% of respondents say that moving key enterprise applications to the cloud has increased productivity.

Additional benefits of cloud-based enterprise apps include increased flexibility (50%), cost savings (39%), increased agility (36%), and increased collaboration (36%).

"That's the good news about cloud apps. The bad news is that hybrid IT contributes to the performance gap. There is an increased difficulty in getting end-to-end visibility into the complex, hybrid IT architectures that result from the use of both cloud and on-premises apps," the company explains.

Van Rensburg says enterprise should invest in comprehensive solutions that provide end-to-end application visibility, optimisation and control.

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