Compuware Study: CIOs Fear Poor User Experience, Hidden Costs In Cloud Computing
DETROIT (WWJ) -- A new survey shows that when it comes to cloud computing, a majority of CIOs around the globe worry about poor end-user experience and hidden costs.
Compuware Corp. (Nasdaq: CPWR) Tuesday announced the findings of the global survey of 468 CIOs into attitudes and concerns relating to cloud computing. The study was conducted by independent research and consulting firm Research In Action.
According to the survey, 79 percent of CIOs were concerned about hidden costs associated with cloud computing. Other top concerns included poor end user experience due to performance bottlenecks, the impact of poor performance on brand perception and customer loyalty, and loss of revenue due to poor availability, performance, or troubleshooting cloud services.
CIOs rated cloud computing as their top investment priority in both the short and long term, with integration between public, hybrid and private cloud cited as the most important trend in the cloud computing space over the next five years.
"With cloud adoption topping the list of priorities for CIOs, companies are clearly seeing a benefit to the agility, flexibility and time-to-value that cloud services can deliver," said Bernd Greifeneder, CTO of Compuware's APM business unit. "But CIOs are right to carefully consider the impact cloud and third-party services can have on end-user experience. The dynamic and remote characteristics of cloud-based applications require a new, smart and automatic approach for deep, proactive monitoring that not only identifies end-user experience problems but also provides deep diagnostics for problem resolution."
The study also revealed that companies are increasingly leveraging the cloud to deliver business-critical applications, such as e-commerce, which was the most commonly used cloud service; 81 percent of CIOs are either already using cloud-based e-commerce platforms or are planning to within the next 12 months.
However, despite the business-critical nature of these cloud applications, 73 percent of companies are still using outdated methods to track and manage application performance. In fact, the most common metric used to track application performance in the cloud is simple availability or uptime, rather than more granular end-user metrics such as response time, page rendering time and user interactivity time.
"The cloud is increasingly being used to deliver business-critical applications, so it is quite shocking that most companies are just waiting for problems to occur and then firefighting," said Thomas Mendel, managing director at Research In Action. "The fact is that most traditional monitoring tools simply don't work in the cloud. Effectively monitoring and managing modern cloud-based applications and services requires a new approach designed to work in today's complex, hybrid and dynamic environments. Failure to do so could have a hugely detrimental impact on reputation, customer loyalty and revenues."
Download the complete survey report here.
Compuware APM commissioned Research in Action, an independent research company, to conduct a study examining IT project and investment priorities for 2013. In December 2012, Research in Action interviewed 468 IT decision makers from large and mid-sized enterprises from a range of industries across the U.S., Asia and Europe.
Compuware APM optimizes and monitors tens of thousands of applications for more than 4,000 customers, large and small, around the globe.