System iNetwork

July 10, 2007

What's IT's Worst Problem? Studies Can't Agree

Press releases about interesting IT-related studies cross my desk constantly. For years I simply ignored them because there wasn't much I could do with them. But the advantage of a blog is that I can at least point to them and some of the issues they raise. The issues become sharper when several studies point to dramatically different problems.

Four recent ones form a case in point. All frame their announcements as if they're pinpointing the most significant problem for IT in today's world, but strangely enough, they completely disagree about what that is. None of the four is System i-specific, but it seems illogical to suppose similar studies at System i shops wouldn't provide at least somewhat similar results.

Let's start with the SupportSoft IT Headache Index, a study sponsored last spring by SupportSoft ( http://www.supportsoft.com ), a seller of help desk automation software and services primarily for Windows. That study analyzed two million call logs from 20 large corporations averaging 75,000 employees each and found that 75 percent of all help desk calls are caused by just five major problem groups. Twenty percent, the largest group, were caused by password problems. System problems such as system performance or hardware failures, and problems with or requests for modifications to applications were the next two most common cause of calls at 16 percent each. Connectivity issues, especially VPN complaints and remote-access setups, were fourth at 12 percent, and e-mail problems were fifth at 11 percent. I don't think too many people could disagree that dealing with user complaints is a major time sink for many IT people and that, as SupportSoft unsurprisingly concludes, more self-service password and other help-desk automation solutions would help.

In our market, ARCAD Software's ( http://www.arcadsoftware.com ) ARCAD-Customer, SoftLanding Systems' ( http://www.softlanding.com ) ExpressDesk and HelpDesk, GroupSoft Systems' ( http://www.groupsoft.com ) GS/HelpDesk, Q-SYS' ( http://www.q-sys-co.uk ) Q-CHASE, Datawatch's ( http://www.datawatch.com ) Visual|Help Desk, SafeStone Technologies' ( http://www.safestone.com ) AxcessIT Password Reset Manager, Geneous Software's ( http://www.geneous.com ) Password Geneous, and Proginet Corporation's ( http://www.proginet.co.uk ) SecurPass are the main help-desk automation solutions for i5/OS. If you're running Notes/Domino you can add GWI Software's ( http://www.gwi.com ) c.Support for IBM/Domino, DominoKeys' ( http://www.dominokeys.com ) Help Center, Basic Business Systems' ( http://www.basic.co.uk ) Service Desk for Lotus Notes, and PistolStar's ( http://www.pistolstar.com ) Web Set Password to the list. (For product descriptions of all the above, see SystemiNetwork.com, article ID 20777.)

But that's not the biggest IT problem, advocates of Managed Objects' ( http://www.managedobjects.com ) June survey of 200 U.S. IT managers and senior leaders would argue. They'd say it's application software. In this survey, 61 percent of respondents reported that applications caused more infrastructure downtime at their companies than all hardware problems combined. In environments where organizations rely more on homegrown software than off-the-shelf apps, that number rose to 80 percent. The survey went on to find that 82 percent of the surveyed organizations reported application crashes significant enough to affect their businesses, with an average duration of 3-4 hours and at an average cost of more than $10,000 per hour. ManagedObjects, a producer of application dependency-mapping tools, naturally claims application dependency-mapping tools are the answer. Maybe it's right, but its tools don't work for System i.

Products offering that kind of help for the System i include ARCAD Software's ARCAD-Observer, Business Computer Design International's ( http://www.bcdsoftware.com ) Docu-Mint, Midrange Dynamics GmbH's ( http://www.midrangedynamics.com ) MDXREF, KST Software's ( http://www.kstsoftware.com ) PGMREF Master, Hawkeye Information Systems' ( http://www.hawkinfo.com ) Pathfinder, Applied Logic Corporation's ( http://www.alcsoftware.com ) PDE/400, Software Management's ( http://www.smisupervisor.com ) SMI SuperVisor, ADEonics' ( http://www.adeonics.com ) TOTAL/400-DU, and Databorough's ( http://www.databorough.com ) X-Analysis. (For brief product descriptions of most of the above, see SystemiNetwork.com, article ID 20571, or a refresh of that roundup of this product area in the upcoming August issue of System iNEWS.)

Our last two studies disagree with SupportSoft and Managed Objects' conclusions. According to Pillar Data Systems ( http://www.pillardata.com ), a purveyor of enterprise network storage systems, surveys conducted of IT shops in the U.K. last month by The Kern Organization and the National Computing Centre found that IT staffs there see their biggest problem as one of infrastructure, specifically paying for heating, cooling, and floor space in data centers. Of the Kern survey respondents, 83 percent said space, cooling, and power had a great impact on storage purchase decisions and 56 percent said environmental issues affected their storage purchase decisions. The NCC study shows respondents expecting demand for data center floor space to grow by 20 percent in just the next two years and 35 percent reporting that power consumption generates the biggest financial pressure on budgets for computer operations. (It must be all that e-mail everyone leaves archived on the server . . .) Pillar, of course, will sell you a storage system that meets all these challenges. I won't even try to list all the System i hardware vendors with storage solutions here.

So who's right about the nature of IT's worst problem? Is it the headache of not being able to get enough done on strategic projects because so many end users have so many daily problems? Is it that the interactions of all the application software you're required to maintain is starting to make maps tracking their relationships look like spaghetti code from freshman computer science majors? Is it that the need to track and store the mushrooming volume of business data is about to require you to sublet part of the nearest mall as space for a server farm? Which study result hits home for you? Or maybe it's something altogether different. What do you think your enterprise's biggest IT problem is?

Posted by at July 10, 2007 2:14 PM