The complexity of delivering web services may reduce the productivity gains derived from their deployment, according to a poll of 50 IT managers.

Conducted by traffic management system vendor CatchFire Systems, the study found the number one problem when provisioning applications across the internet was assessing the capacity needed.

Applications being deployed on internets and intranets included human resources, supply chain management and customer relationship management, as well as other portal-based applications.

"Enabling web access to corporate applications is an extremely complex process and is proving a nightmare for IT managers to implement," said Nigel Thomas, marketing director at CatchFire Systems (Europe).

"Opening up formerly closed applications to unpredictable usage patterns puts a tremendous strain on total web infrastructure."

Balancing unexpected traffic surges from users of internal web-based applications with demands made by external users and unexpected cross-application interference were cited as particular difficulties.

Respondents also mentioned problems with managing interlocking systems with different peak usage times and understanding the complex interrelationships between multiple applications.

"The issue is that traditional web infrastructure treats all requests equally - whether a business-critical order-taking application or merely browsing the corporate intranet," added Thomas.