IT relying on helpdesk calls to firefight problems

Two-thirds of problems are not discovered until end users call the service desk

Most IT managers still rely on helpdesk calls to discover problems in their applications, despite nearly two-thirds believing that poor application performance results in financial loss, according to new research from IT services provider Compuware.

The research, carried out by analyst firm Forrester, revealed that 64 per cent of problems are not discovered until end users call the service desk. Nearly half of respondents said that users complain of poor performance even when monitoring tools show that there are no problems.

The key challenge, according to more than half of the IT managers surveyed, is the growing complexity of applications in their IT environments, something which the report predicts will get worse with the growing use of service-oriented architectures and virtualisation technologies.

Compuware technology manager Hadrian James believes that to address the problem, companies need to ensure effective communication between all traditionally siloed areas of IT, namely the server, applications and network teams.

"You need to bring everyone in, and you need to have an holistic view. Is it actually working from an end-user perspective?" he said. "And when you know you have a problem, you must be able to know which point is creating the bottleneck. "

Alongside the tools to enable user experience monitoring, firms must also think about approaching these issues in a service management framework so that they understand their services from a business perspective, the report concluded.