New Research: Enterprises Still Not Using Their Most Valuable IT Resource Efficiently

In a research report titled The case for adaptive IT process automation", it was revealed that IT staff is still performing many manual tasks that can now be automated with new IT process automation software. The report, released by Singlestep Technologies, an enterprise network management software company working to bridge the gap between Basic and Autonomic computing, showed that ITs most valuable asset, people, is still being used inefficiently. With technology advances and a growing number of stories being written on autonomic computing or adaptive solutions, it was surprising to see that the majority of VPs and CIOs interviewed revealed that their IT departments still perform too many time-consuming, mundane, mistake prone, and repetitive tasks. This includes gathering and manipulating data for analysis to manually troubleshooting problems for network events, all from disparate sources, just to gain some network intelligence.

SEATTLE, WA (PRWEB) August 5, 2004 -- Singlestep Technologies, an enterprise network management software company working to bridge the gap between Basic and Autonomic computing, conducted research that surprisingly showed ITs most valuable asset, people, is still not being used efficiently or productively. While technology advances and a growing number of stories are being written about how autonomic computing or adaptive solutions can immediately solve IT pains, the research report, titled The case for adaptive IT process automation", showed that most IT departments are still idle in basic networking management. The majority of time IT departments still performs too many time-consuming, mundane, mistake prone, and repetitive tasks. This includes gathering and manipulating data for analysis to manually troubleshooting problems for network events, all from disparate sources, just to gain some network intelligence.

When asked for the most beneficial need between Integration, Analysis and Automation, the vast majority of the VPs and CIOs in these focus groups chose analysis to be the most important factor for impacting their companys network management and IT process organization. However, they described existing processes for network analysis as still being fairly manual and time-consuming. So, why havent companys moved to an autonomic solution for easier analysis? Integration. When examined closer, the research showed that most of the companies interviewed had multiple networking management systems, being both difficult and cumbersome trying to combine into one seamless system for effective analysis and automation. Moreover, VPs and CIOs see integration as being a top priority for moving forward towards a more automated, adaptive network. The challenges arise when turning disparate systems data into useful analytical information for the right people at the right time. VPs and CIOs believe consolidation of data will help, but more importantly, being able to extract the data and analyze more efficiently will be more useful. Then, only following integration and analysis of existing information, can a company successfully automate.

It was clear from the research that the VPs and CIOs we spoke with are still wrestling with how to get easier access to and control of the information in and about their network," said Chris Neal, Research Director with Sage Research. At the same time, many of them are starting to look towards more automation - be it utility, adaptive, predictive, or autonomic - but are stuck right now with manually managing information."

Getting a system that can help bridge the gap between basic and managed networks, a company takes the initial step, without much more work, to progress to an easy and predictive, adaptive, and autonomic network. This bridge connecting integration of their disparate systems will allow companies to get past their initial struggle with collecting the data and enable analysis of their networks in a more complete and thorough spectrum, saving time, money, and resources.

The executive summary of the research titled The case for adaptive IT process automation" is available for free at http://www.singlestep.com/products/resrcs.php

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About Singlestep Technologies

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Singlestep Technologies provides solutions that help IT professionals automate the process of running and managing the data center. The companys first application, Singlestep Unity is built with our patented technology, and designed to control the flow of information from existing network management systems to any IT stakeholder. Operations staff use Unity to bring together information from multiple existing network or security management systems and to automate the response to identified problems. CIOs and others use Unity to produce a business impact view of network performance, so they can better align IT expenses to deliver business benefit. At all levels our products help integrate existing information, provide analysis and automate response. Going forward, we intend to duplicate our success in network management across all the stores of information in the data center that are event driven, multi-vendor, and managed today through manual processes. We have started this by partnering with the largest companies that deliver service and best practices to IT consumers (IBM, HP, etc.). For more information about Singlestep, Singlestep Unity, or our partner programs, visit: www.singlestep.com or email: info@singlestep.com.

Singlestep Unity is a trademark of Singlestep Technologies, Corp. in the United States and other countries.