Survey shows need for better IP management

New Quocirca report highlights European IT managers' concerns

A new insight report carried out by Quocirca for Computer Associates (CA) shows that European IT managers have concerns about proactively managing key network systems, such as internal IP telephony.

Quocirca's service director Bob Tarzey said, "This isn't a doom and gloom report, what we looked at was the capability gap, i.e. the importance people place on a particular technology over their ability to manage it."

CA's EMEA vice president for solutions management Duncan Fisken added, “Many IT managers feel they simply don’t have the time or resources to manage their networks as proactively as they perhaps should."

Tarzey also pointed out that monitoring the network to make sure it was fit for purpose was considered more important than making the network accessible. " Good access to a poorly performing network is not much use," he said. Tarzey added that the research also gave a snapshot of what businesses were running over their networks. Nearly 80 percent were using VPNs and over 40 percent said they had implemented video applications on their networks.

The survey also highlighted IT managers' concerns about which applications were most important to monitor. Network management capabilities, such as Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS), were rated highest priority, rather than specific ones, such as VoIP or video.

Other survey findings were that enterprises with between 1,000 and 5,000 employees were ahead of larger enterprises comprising over 5,000 employees in their adoption of IP networking. Tarzey said that this was because smaller businesses have fewer legacy applications and greater confidence in their network management capabilities.

The survey questioned over 470 EMEA IT decision makers from companies with over 1,000 employees, including around a 100 from the UK.