Companies More Likely to Virtualize Applications Than Move to Cloud in 2011

AppDynamics, the next-generation Application Performance Management (APM) company, today announced the results of its 2011 Application Performance Management Survey, “Apps on the Move.” Polling more than 140 IT professionals who oversee application performance in Java or .NET environments, the survey provides a snapshot of application performance practices in 2010 and how these will evolve in 2011.

Today’s enterprise applications continue to grow in number and complexity, and are increasingly business and revenue critical. The 2011 APM Survey indicates that recent trends in application development and management, such as the increasing use of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Agile development and the move toward virtualization, are adding to this complexity. In an attempt to wrestle with these new environments, companies are beginning to adopt a collaborative “DevOps” approach to managing mission-critical applications.

According to the survey:

• Yes to Virtualization, still unsure about Cloud: Respondents indicated greater interest in proceeding with virtualization projects than migrating applications to the cloud, with 54% saying they have virtualization projects on dock for 2011. A resounding 67% of respondents said they have no plans to migrate their applications to the cloud next year.
• Rise of “DevOps” approach: Nearly a third of respondents report that they have adopted a management approach where Development and Operations share the same reporting structure and are jointly responsible for the performance mission-critical applications.
• Agile and SOA continue to grow in 2011: The vast majority of respondents release new capabilities multiple times per year and operate applications built with SOA architectures. In 2011, 49% of respondents say they expect to ramp up agile development, and 66% expect to leverage additional SOA initiatives for mission-critical apps.
• Application outages and performance failures may be due to improper app management: In 2010, 88% of respondents reported they experienced at least one Severity 1 problem in regards to mission-critical apps, and nearly 50% had experienced five or more such problems.  This may be due to the lack of performance management tools. The survey found that 37% of respondents “fly blind” and use no APM tool to manage their mission-critical applications, while 30% use a homegrown tool.

Read More