Assessing real-world, end-user network conditions and understanding inefficient use of network resources are the top two issues facing application performance engineers in 2013, according to a new survey by Shunra Software.
In addition, most organizations do not adequately address network conditions or application performance throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
The report, Top Challenges Performance Engineers Face in 2013, surveyed 316 IT specialists, managers, architects, developers, and engineers to uncover how performance engineers plan to include performance in application development and deployment plans. Highlighting the lack of consideration for application performance, 61 percent of respondents do not design or develop for performance.
“This indicates a persistent failure to consider performance requirements in the earliest states of the application lifecycle,” said Bill Varga, Shunra’s COO. “That failure puts organizations at risk for increased costs associated with finding and fixing application performance issues post-deployment. This cost is estimated at over $60 billion in the US alone. A full third of those costs could be avoided with better testing practices.”
This lack of early SDLC testing is closely associated with lack of budget. 37 percent of respondents do not have any budget in 2013 for designing or developing for performance.
“Not allocating budget for designing or developing for performance is myopic and will cost organization much more later on,” continued Varga. “Industry analysts, from Forrester to EMA and others, agree that the average cost of a production incident can exceed $45,000 per hour. This includes lost revenue, employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and remediation. Those hours quickly add up to much more than what should have been spent to ensure performance from the beginning.”
Other indicators of a lack of consideration for performance testing throughout the SDLC include:
- Only 42 percent consider performance when functional testing
- 38 percent do not plan to test for network conditions or will test in production only
- 68 percent of organizations reported experiencing performance related problems of critical business applications
- Only 44 percent of organizations have a 2013 plan to proactively assess the performance of these applications
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