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IBM, Dell, Fujitsu & Stratus Get Highest Marks in ITIC Reliability Survey

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

For the fifth year in a row, IBM servers delivered the highest levels of reliability and uptime among 14 server platforms.

Those are the results of the latest independent ITIC 2013 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at over 550 organizations worldwide from August 2012 through January 2013.

Among the high-end mainframe class systems, both the IBM System z and the Stratus Technologies’ ftServer 6310 delivered the highest inherent reliability: both had no instances – 0% – of the most severe Tier 3 outages lasting four hours or more of duration. Among the mainstream “work horse” servers, IBM’s Power Systems recorded the least amount of unplanned downtime, approximately 13 minutes per server/per year. By contrast, some 6 percent of organizations using Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems) x86-based servers experienced of over four (4) hours of per server/per annum downtime. This was the highest percentage of lengthy Tier 3 server outages among the 14 platforms surveyed. …

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IBM, Dell, Fujitsu & Stratus Get Highest Marks in ITIC Reliability Survey Read More »

ITIC 2011 Reliability Shows that Dell, HP, IBM & Stratus Score High Marks for Service & Support

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Dell, HP, IBM and Stratus Technologies won high praise from corporate users for their prompt and efficient after market technical service and support in the latest ITIC 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey.

The results came from a broad based survey that polled organizations worldwide on the reliability, security and technical service and support from among 14 of the leading server hardware platforms and 18 of the most widely deployed server operating system distributions.

As we said in an earlier discussion, each poll elicits some surprising and unexpected revelations. In this survey, users reserved their highest encomiums and most critical barbs for the server hardware vendors – both in terms of product performance and reliability and the service and support they receive from their respective vendors. …

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IT Departments Pragmatic about 2010 Budgets, Resources

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

From Australia to Italy, from Canada to Columbia and from the U.S. to South Africa, pragmatism is the order of the day for IT departments as they struggle to stretch their 2010 budgets and resources to make much needed infrastructure upgrades in the face of a still uncertain and tight economy.
Those are the results of a new 2010 IT & Technology Trends survey which polled over 500 respondents from 18 countries worldwide on IT budget and staffing issues for the year ahead. ITIC partnered with Stratus Technologies and Sunbelt Software to poll C-level executives and IT managers. The results indicate that businesses are in a better place now than they were at the close of 2010. And there’s even a hint of cautious optimism in the air. The survey results indicate that by and large organizations of all sizes and across all verticals will maintain IT staffing levels and budgets during 2010 as they continue to implement upgrade and migration projects that began in 2009.
Nearly one-third of organizations – 31% — revealed that their IT budgets will remain the same in 2010, while 27% say their budgets will increase and an 17% minority said IT budgets will decrease in the New Year. Interestingly, 15% of respondents said their 2010 IT budgets are still not approved and 10% remain unsure of their budgets for the next 12 months.
Among respondents who indicated their budgets will increase, the largest percentage – 27% — say the increases will be modest in the four-to-six percent range. Only 3% indicated their budgets would rise by 30% or more while 50% are unsure.
And among the 17% minority of respondents who say their budgets will decrease, the cuts will be minimal or modest. Some 7% say they will decline by one-to-three percent, while another 11% say they will decline by four-to-six percent. Only 7% of the respondents indicated their firms will slash 2010 IT budgets by 21% or more; 68% said they weren’t sure how big the budget declines would be.
IT Hiring: Modest but Stable
Based on the survey responses it is apparent that IT staffing levels are stable. However, it’s safe to say that very few firms would consider themselves fully staffed or even at pre-December 2007 levels, which was when the U.S. Government officially said the recession began.
And while the economy has not fully recovered, there is a sense from the survey respondents that the worst may be behind them. Over half of those polled – 52% — said their organizations will maintain current IT staffing levels for 2010. In a sign that business is improving, 25% of those polled say their organizations will hire additional IT staff as needed in the coming 12 months. Only a very small 2% minority say their firms are planning layoffs. Another 14% of respondents, say their organizations have made no decisions on hiring and are taking a wait and see approach.
Current IT staffing levels: Surprisingly just over one-quarter — 26% — of survey respondents indicated their IT departments are smaller now than they were in 2008. The biggest percentage – 42% — responded “No” while another 32% say their IT staffing levels are about the same as they were a year ago.
The anecdotal responses from around the globe all shared a common thread: pragmatism and a desire to do what it takes to weather the ongoing economic downturn. The uncertainty of the economy and how to Many respondents voiced concern about staying on top of crucial issues like security, disaster recovery and finding the funds to make the necessary desktop and server hardware, software and application upgrades.
But once again, pragmatism seems to be the byword. Many of the survey respondents simply said they’re picking up the slack and working harder and longer hours. It’s also apparent that some vertical markets have been hit harder by the recession than others. Government agencies, state and local municipalities have suffered. Likewise, the automotive industry and smaller hospitals and consulting firms have also been hit hard over the past 18 months.
An IT manager at a small government agency noted that a large part of their budget comes from state and federal grants. “Those sources are about dry in this economy. We took a 65% cut in state funding this year and pray that we can maintain that low level in next year’s state budget rather than take another cut,” he said.
An IT manager at a mid-sized U.S. consulting firm said his organization is just trying to weather the severe downturn. “Our existing clients have cut back on spending and only do what is absolutely necessary to keep their systems running. New clients are much more difficult to cultivate, so survival over this period is the top priority,” he observed.
“Our main goal is to keep the infrastructure updated, supported and available with less staff,” said an IT manager at a mid-sized healthcare firm with one thousand users.
No one is sure when the economy will rebound to pre-2007 levels. Meanwhile, IT departments are doing the only thing they can do: endure. The silver lining in the cloud is that most organizations have adapted to the belt tightening and working longer hours and have somehow generally managed to keep the corporate data centers up and running. It may not be comfortable or optimal but it’s working.

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Application Availability, Reliability and Downtime: Ignorance is NOT Bliss

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Two out of five businesses – 40% – report that their major business applications require higher availability rates than they did two or three years ago. However an overwhelming 81% are unable to quantify the cost of downtime and only a small 5% minority of businesses are willing to spend whatever it takes to guarantee the highest levels of application availability 99.99% and above. Those are the results of the latest ITIC survey which polled C-level executives and IT managers at 300 corporations worldwide.

ITIC partnered with Stratus Technologies in Maynard, Ma. a vendor that specializes in high availability and fault tolerant hardware and software solutions, to compose the Web-based survey. ITIC conducted this blind, non-vendor and non-product specific survey which polled businesses on their application availability requirements, virtualization and the compliance rate of their service level agreements (SLAs). None of the respondents received any remuneration. The Web-based survey consisted of multiple choice and essay questions. ITIC analysts also conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to obtain detailed anecdotal data.

Respondents ranged from SMBs with 100 users to very large enterprises with over 100,000 end users. Industries represented: academic, advertising, aerospace, banking, communications, consumer products, defense, energy, finance, government, healthcare, insurance, IT services, legal, manufacturing, media and entertainment, telecommunications, transportation, and utilities. None of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation. The respondents hailed from 15 countries; 85% were based in North America.

Survey Highlights

The survey results uncovered many “disconnects” between the levels of application reliability that corporate enterprises profess to need and the availability rates their systems and applications actually deliver. Additionally, a significant portion of the survey respondents had difficulty defining what constitutes high application availability; do not specifically track downtime and could not quantify or qualify the cost of downtime and its impact on their network operations and business.

Among the other survey highlights:

  • A 54% majority of IT managers and executives surveyed said more than two-thirds of their companies’ applications require the highest level of availability – 99.99% — or four nines of uptime.
  • Over half – 52% of survey respondents said that virtualization technology increases application uptime and availability; only 4% said availability decreased as a result of virtualization deployments.
  • In response to the question, “which aspect of application availability is most important” to the business, 59% of those polled cited the prevention of unplanned downtime as being most crucial; 40% said disaster recovery and business continuity were most important; 38% said that minimizing planned downtime to apply patches and upgrades was their top priority; 16% said the ability to meet SLAs was most important and 40% of the survey respondents said all of the choices were equally crucial to their business needs.
  • Some 41% said they would be satisfied with conventional 99% to 99.9% (the equivalent of two or three nines) availability for their most critical applications. Ninety-nine percent or 99.9% does not qualify as a high-availability or continuous-availability solution.
  • An overwhelming 81% of survey respondents said the number of applications that demand high availability has increased in the past two-to-three years.
  • Of those who said they have been unable to meet service level agreements (SLAs), 72% can’t or don’t keep track of the cost and productivity losses created by downtime.
  • Budgetary constraints are a gating factor prohibiting many organizations from installing software solutions that would improve application availability. Overall, 70% of the survey respondents said they lacked the funds to purchase value-added availability solutions (40%); or were unsure how much or if their companies would spend to guarantee application availability (30%).
  • Of the 30% of businesses that quantified how much their firms would spend on availability solutions, 3% indicated they would spend $2,000 to $4,000; 8% said $4,000 to $5,000; another 3% said $5,000 to $10,000; 11% — mainly large enterprises indicated they were willing to allocate $10,000 to $15,000 to ensure application availability and 5% said they would spend “whatever it takes.”

According to the survey findings, just under half of all businesses – 49% – lack the budget for high availability technology and 40% of the respondents reported they don’t understand what qualifies as high availability. An overwhelming eight out of 10 IT managers – 80% — are unable to quantify the cost of downtime to their C-level executives.

To reiterate, the ITIC survey polled users on the various aspects and impact of application availability and downtime but it did not specify any products or vendors.

The survey results supplemented by ITIC first person interviews with IT managers and C-level executives clearly shows that on a visceral level, businesses are very aware of the need for increased application availability has grown. This is particularly true in light of the emergence of new technologies like application and desktop virtualization, cloud computing, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The fast growing remote, mobile and telecommuting end user population utilizes unified communications and collaboration applications and utilities is also spurring the need for greater application availability and reliability.

High Application Availability Not a Reality for 80% of Businesses

The survey results clearly show that network uptime isn’t keeping pace with the need for application availability. At the same time, IT managers and C-level executives interviewed by ITIC did comprehend the business risks associated with downtime, even though most are unable to quantify the cost of downtime or qualify the impact to the corporation, its customers, suppliers and business partners when unplanned application and network outages occur.

“We are continually being asked to do more with less,” said an IT manager at a large enterprise in the Northeast. “We are now at a point, where the number of complex systems requiring expert knowledge has exceeded the headcount needed to maintain them … I am dreading vacation season,” he added.

Another executive at an Application Service provider acknowledged that even though his firm’s SLA guarantees to customers are a modest 98%, it has on occasion, been unable to meet those goals. The executive said his firm compensated one of its clients for a significant outage incident. “We had a half day outage a couple of years ago which cost us in excess of $40,000 in goodwill payouts to a handful of our clients, despite the fact that it was the first outage in five years,” he said.

Another user said a lack of funds prevented his firm from allocating capital expenditure monies to purchase solutions that would guarantee 99.99% application availability. “Our biggest concern is keeping what we have running and available. Change usually costs money, and at the moment our budgets are simply in survival mode,” he said.

Another VP of IT at a New Jersey-based business said that ignorance is not bliss. “If people knew the actual dollar value their applications and customers represent, they’d already have the necessary software availability solutions in place to safeguard applications,” he said. “Yes, it does cost money to purchase application availability solutions, but we’d rather pay now, then wait for something to fail and pay more later,” the VP of IT said.

Overall, the survey results show that the inability of users to put valid metrics and cost formulas in place to track and quantify what uptime means to their organization is woefully inadequate and many corporations are courting disaster.

ITIC advises businesses to track downtime, the actual cost of downtime to the organization and to take the necessary steps to qualify the impact of downtime including lost data, potential liability risks e.g. lost business, lost customers, potential lawsuits and damage to the company’s reputation. Once a company can quantify the amount of downtime associated with its main line of business applications, the impact of downtime and the risk to the business, it can then make an accurate assessment of whether or not its current IT infrastructure adequately supports the degree of application availability the corporation needs to maintain its SLAs.

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