Survey Finds Only 14% of Companies Have Virtualized Mission-Critical Applications

Organizations require more evidence that "Tier 1" applications will succeed in virtual environments

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Sept 1, 2010 – AppDynamics, Inc., the next-generation Application Performance Management (APM) company, today announced the results of its Application Virtualization Outlook survey. Focused on understanding enterprise efforts to virtualize business applications, the survey revealed a significant divide in the pace of adoption of virtualization for non-critical systems versus mission-critical systems. In particular, the results show that the majority of companies have yet to move Tier 1, mission-critical applications to virtual environments. Despite widely acknowledging the benefits of virtualization, most companies noted that they need more evidence that mission-critical applications will succeed in virtual environments.

According to the survey:

Application Virtualization Experiences ‘VM Stall’: While 83 percent report they have virtualized their non-critical applications and systems, in stark contrast, only 14 percent of respondents reported that they have fully virtualized “Tier 1” applications. With regard to those mission-critical applications, respondents said they were 50 percent more likely to virtualize applications used by employees than to virtualize the applications that directly interact with customers.

People, Performance & Design Are Top Concerns: When asked about the primary obstacles preventing the virtualization of mission-critical applications, respondents cited ‘people issues’, performance and design concerns as most the common. In fact, 52 percent of companies noted that application owners have blocked the project to virtualize a Tier 1 application. At the same time, 49 percent worry that the applications aren’t designed to support virtualization and 45 percent cited concerns about performance degradation once virtualized.

Benefits Are Clear, Confidence Is Lacking: While these concerns persist, there is wide recognition that compelling benefits exist when companies virtualize mission-critical applications. 59 percent strongly agree that virtualization would result in server consolidation and related power and cooling savings, while 49 percent strongly agree that failover/disaster recovery capabilities would improve in a virtual environment. 41 percent agree that their IT agility and responsiveness to the business would improve. Yet, the majority of companies still expressed a lack of confidence that their applications could succeed in virtual environments.

“What application owners are missing is hard evidence that their application will perform acceptably once it is in a virtual environment,” said Jyoti Bansal, CEO of AppDynamics. “They are under intense pressure to ensure that applications experience 100% uptime and meet strict performance SLAs, and they are looking to virtualization teams to show them that this transition won’t affect service quality.”

“It’s on the shoulders of the virtualization teams to demonstrate that virtualization won't impact their ability to achieve business objectives,” continued Bansal. “By baselining performance in the non-virtualized environment and capturing detailed performance metrics, companies can provide an apples-to-apples comparison pre-and post-virtualization. This is a great first step to encourage the virtualization of mission-critical applications.”

For more information about the Application Virtualization Outlook survey visit our blog. For thoughts on best practices to ensure performance of virtualized applications, visit here.

About AppDynamics
AppDynamics is the Application Intelligence company. With AppDynamics, enterprises have real-time insights into application performance, user performance and business performance so they can move faster in an increasingly sophisticated, software-driven world. AppDynamics’ integrated suite of applications is built on its innovative, enterprise-grade App iQ Platform that enables its customers to make faster decisions that enhance customer engagement and improve operational and business performance. AppDynamics is uniquely positioned to enable enterprises to accelerate their digital transformations by actively monitoring, analyzing and optimizing complex application environments at scale.

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