Poll: Performance Management Helps Cloud Planning

IT performance management is more than just a troubleshooting tool – it is playing a key role in planning for big changes such as the move to the cloud.

Cloud computing moves IT into centralised resources outside the company,  and these resources must deliver good enough performance to meet the organisation’s needs, so IT managers are using performance management tools to evaluate and prepare for moves to cloud computing, according to a poll of eWEEK Europe readers.

Cloud planning tops performance poll

Troubleshooting problems in networks and applications is the traditional purpose of performance management, but did not top our poll which asked for the top performance management priorities this year.

“Prepaing for cloud initiatives” is eWEEK readers’ top priority in performance management, with 23 percent of the responses,  according to our poll. Troubleshooting came second on 18 percent.

Predictably, monitoring applications scored highly, with 16 percent of the votes, while two more planning applications came next: preparing for disaster recovery moves (13 percent) and preparing for consolidation (12 percent).

Optimising WANs has always been a key use of performance tools, especially when WAN bandwidth is expensive and applications are hungry for throughput.  At only ten percent of the votes, WAN optimisation was lower than we might have expected – this may simply mean for many readers, it has been sorted.

As always the “Other” option opened our eyes to things we wouldn’t have thought of. The eight percent of votes here represented a lot of what might be termed “spoiled ballot papers”, and a few good serious additions to the things that performance management might do.

Some of you, however, appear to have performance software with more capabilities than we would imagine. Some of you expect these tools to provide “Lulz“, “smoking weed”, an opportunity for “Living it up like a G-star” and, er, self-pleasuring.

So what are your other cloud barriers?

Network and application performance are clearly issues to consider in moving to the cloud, but what are the other barriers?

In early 2010, it appeared that UK businesses did not yet understand the cloud, while a poll last summer found that half of eWEEK Europe readers did not trust it.

Since then, polls have found that some of you are prepared to move certain services to the cloud, but you are divided about which ones. You were sceptical in January, about the use of the cloud for government IT – a view which it seems the government is moving towards.

So now is a good time to ask you – what are the main stumbling blocks that come up when you think of moving to the cloud?

Even if you are now convinced and moving to the cloud, there will be issues that concern you. Do these include security, or reliability? Perhaps you are ready to go, but regulations are stopping you? Or do you have to convince a staid corporate culture? Perhaps you fear loss of control? Or maybe you are in the group that still feels that the cloud is just a bad idea.

Whatever your feelings, let us know – and as usual, we open ourselves to your ever-helpful suggestions in the “Other” option.