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

March 31, 2008 – Minneapolis, MN — Network Instruments, a leading provider of innovative analysis solutions for in-depth network intelligence and continuous availability, today released its second annual State of the Network Global Study. 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.

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 2008 Global Study indicated network professionals faced the following challenges:

• Continued lack of troubleshooting information: 31 percent cited this as their major network concern
• Ensuring application delivery: 25 percent felt this was the greatest network challenge
• Application performance headaches: Over one-third cited bandwidth consumption issues as the chief offender, while 32 percent selected application latency and delay issues as the second most common
• Problems investigating intermittent errors: 32 percent felt their organization needed to improve its ability to troubleshoot sporadic performance errors
• Security and compliance problems: These issues continue to be a headache for three-quarters of respondents

"Over the last two years, while IT staffs purchased new tools to optimize applications and traffic, the amount of time spent troubleshooting performance problems increased," said Charles Thompson, manager of systems engineering for Network Instruments. "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."

Network Troubleshooting
Solving application issues consumes the largest amount of time for network professionals. Thirty percent of network professionals spend 26–50 days annually replicating network issues, while 41 percent spend up to 25 days per year attempting to replicate network problems.

More of a network professional’s time is spent trying to isolate problem causes. According to the study, most IT teams spend 26–50 days annually attempting to isolate the source of performance issues to either the network or application. Forty-one percent spend over 50 days a year determining the source of performance issues.

Implementing VoIP
The strong rate of VoIP implementations increased five percent in 2008 with 66 percent of organizations having implemented or looking to implement VoIP within the next 12 months.

Quality of service and the impact of VoIP on other applications proved to be the largest VoIP concerns for network professionals. This was a shift from 2007, where reliability was the greatest concern.

The most notable shift occurred with the network professional’s confidence in their VoIP systems. Only 13 percent in 2007 were completely confident in their system, compared to 25 percent in 2008.

MPLS & 10 Gb Adoption
Migration to MPLS networks on a global basis appears to be steady, with most organizations still in the early stages of adoption. Thirty-five percent of respondents will have migrated to MPLS networks in the next year, while 55 percent do not have intentions to migrate to MPLS. The study also looked at 10 Gigabit (10 Gb) adoption, which appears to be slow. Twenty-four percent of organizations will implement 10 Gb networks within the next 12 months, while 71 percent indicated they had no plans for deployment.

About the State of the Network Global Study
The study was conducted by Network Instruments to gauge the attitudes and concerns of network professionals, calculate the average time spent by an IT staff troubleshooting network problems, and determine adoption rates of new technologies and topologies. 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.

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About Network Instruments
Network Instruments, a leading provider of innovative analysis solutions helps organizations and enterprises – including 70 of the Global Fortune 100 companies – ensure the delivery of business-critical applications on their networks. The company's monitoring and reporting products provide comprehensive visibility into networks and applications to optimize network performance, speed troubleshooting, and assist long-term capacity planning. Network Instruments solutions provide integrated enterprise-wide reporting and back-in-time investigation capabilities for troubleshooting networks. The company is headquarted in Minneapolis with sales offices worldwide and distributors in over 50 countries. For more information about the company, products, and technology, please visit www.networkinstruments.com or the company’s blog www.networkinstruments.com/blog.

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