Survey Says: Unify Application Delivery

August 8, 2007: Application delivery networking specialist F5 Networks has released the findings of a new study that found, unsurprisingly, many firms are running into performance problems due to lacklustre application deployments.

Conducted by Forrester Consulting and titled “Improving Application Deployments”, the 2007 study canvassed 300 North American IT decision-makers, with 53 percent reporting that application deployments from 2006 suffered performance issues. Next to this, 46 percent of respondents claimed projects were not completed on time, while 41 percent said projects were not completed within budget.

Forrester found that the most often cited root causes of performance issues were network and back-end infrastructure, with 71 percent reporting that their performance issues occur in production environments.

According to the study, these shortcomings reflect the broader role be played by IT departments in driving business initiatives, and the difficulties being faced by departments rolling out applications while being asked to cut costs and consolidate IT assets - all while ensuring both security and business continuity/disaster recovery.

To help eliminate these performance issues, Forrester points to a unified, policy-driven approach to application delivery and claims that application delivery infrastructure is a “critical bridge between IT and the business priorities it supports.”

Forrester defines this infrastructure as “technologies that streamline the connection of any user to any application by minimising deployment burdens, reducing management costs, optimising performance, and increasing security.” This of course means a solid network, which 74 percent of respondents thankfully see as a strategic asset for application delivery.

“Application rollouts marred by poor performance can deal a serious blow to enterprises' business efforts, as well as their ability to stay competitive,” said Jason Needham, Director of Product Management at F5. “A unified application delivery infrastructure, like F5's BIG-IP devices running on TMOS, can help optimise performance levels of existing applications and enable businesses to mitigate application delivery challenges, even as application characteristics change and businesses scale their infrastructures.”

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