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Survey Reveals Pressing Need for Automated Software Problem Resolution Processes

Posted on: Monday, 13 March 2006, 12:00 CST

Identify Software research uncovers broad-ranging impact of application problems - including missed release dates, reduced functionality, productivity drops, and revenue losses

Identify(R) Software, a leader in application problem resolution software, today announced the results of its recent online survey, which revealed the financial and operational impact of application software problems on enterprises and software vendors. Survey participants reported that application performance or quality problems resulted in degradation of company profits and brand loyalty, in addition to dramatically increasing costs and reducing internal productivity.

The survey results show that the impact is felt throughout the application lifecycle. More than 67 percent of participants revealed that they miss product release/project delivery milestones, or launch dates, and nearly half reported that significant functionality gets dropped due to application problems encountered during the development or quality assurance processes. Once these applications are released to the production environment, problems are found to negatively impact revenues and can ultimately harm a company's reputation. Nearly one-third of respondents reported lost revenues or delayed sales due to application problems, while a significant 79 percent reported that application problems had hurt customer service levels. Internal productivity also suffers when production applications aren't behaving properly--as reported by 43 percent of survey participants.

"Identify was founded on the premise that automating application problem resolution is a fundamental component of a sound lifecycle application management strategy," said Identify Software CEO Yochi Slonim. "This latest survey is further evidence that manual approaches, such as eyeballing system logs or using homegrown tools to pinpoint software errors, are increasingly futile."

More than half of survey participants reported plans to spend more on quality improvement technologies in 2006 to meet these challenges. Many enterprises and software vendors are taking advantage of Identify's AppSight(TM) Application Problem Resolution System, which has been proven to eliminate up to 80 percent of the cycle time traditionally consumed by root cause analysis. It is the first and only comprehensive solution for application problem resolution, with an architecture uniquely designed from the ground up to optimize the process of resolving problems.

AppSight leverages patented Black Box software technology to monitor actual application execution in production, as well as in development and QA, to automatically detect faults and performance issues in .NET, Windows, and J2EE applications. By simultaneously capturing a synchronized, real-time log of user actions, system events, performance metrics, configuration data, and code execution flow - much like the "black box" flight recorder on an aircraft captures a real-time record of a flight - AppSight eliminates the need to recreate the environment and reproduce the problem in order to resolve it. Without AppSight, that iterative, time-consuming process is typically performed seven times before the root cause is found. With AppSight, the problem resolution team uses role-specific views to analyze the information captured by the Black Box to rapidly pinpoint the root cause of problems related to performance, mis-configuration, coding errors, or user mistakes.

"In complex, distributed IT environments, which are increasingly common, manual problem resolution methods are ineffective," said Melinda Ballou, program director at IDC. "Automated application problem resolution technology can help eliminate time-consuming troubleshooting efforts and facilitate coordination across geographically dispersed development teams."

About Identify Software

Identify(R) is a leader in application problem resolution software, helping hundreds of enterprises and software vendors speed application delivery, increase application quality, performance, and availability, and reduce application support costs. The company's AppSight Application Problem Resolution System leverages patented Black Box technology to monitor application execution and capture, communicate, and determine the root cause of application problems, thereby dramatically accelerating problem resolution processes across the application lifecycle.

Founded in 1996, Identify is a global organization, with operational headquarters in New York and offices in Israel and throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information about Identify, please visit www.identify.com or call 800.364.5467.

Note: Identify is a registered trademark and AppSight is a trademark of Identify Software Ltd. All other company and product names contained herein are the marks of their respective holders.

Source: Business Wire

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