Mission-critical apps on the rise
More non-traditional applications are now considered mission critical to enterprises, but many companies are still relying on older infrastructure for mission critical applications, according to a new study.
Released Monday, the Intel-commissioned study found that today's mission-critical computing has evolved to include a broader range of applications. Specialized or vertical applications are still critical for businesses but non-traditional applications such as collaboration tools, including e-mail and groupware, and Web portals are increasingly labeled as mission critical, said Eddie Toh, server platform marketing manager at Intel Asia-Pacific.
In a phone interview with ZDNet Asia, Toh defined mission-critical computing as "any application, workload or system that is deemed essential to the function of the organization". That is, if the mission-critical system goes down, it will impact the business and even lead to revenue loss, he explained.
Conducted by Springboard Research in December 2010, the survey polled 1,091 IT decision makers in organizations with more than 500 employees. The survey spanned across 10 countries--Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.
Over one in three respondents, or 35 percent, considered specialized or vertical applications as mission critical. Fourteen percent of executives put enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the same category, while collaboration tools as well as financial and accounting applications were highlighted as mission critical by 10 percent of those surveyed.
But despite the evolution of mission-critical enterprise applications, the study found that 62 percent of businesses have not made changes to their mission-critical infrastructure in the last three years. Toh attributed the reluctance to expand mission-critical infrastructure to several reasons: businesses are satisfied with their current infrastructure; they do not see the need for change; or they have committed investments into their current platforms and the existing platform has a good track record and history.
Enterprises, said Toh, also need to review the traditional way of keeping mission-critical applications separate from other systems. This method is unsustainable and more expensive especially when more and more apps are being considered as mission critical, he said, noting that the IT department will need to allocate more resources to the company's mission-critical systems.
Dane Anderson, CEO and executive vice president at Springboard Research, said in a statement: "Previously, any highly mission-critical applications were bought and maintained in expensive silos of technologies. However, with pressure on organizations to increase workloads, drive efficiencies and cut costs in a post-global financial crisis world, the traditional siloed approach is no longer viable for today's organizations."
"With the expansion of what is deemed mission-critical, we have seen increased investment in virtualization and cloud computing. These technologies are providing them with a new set of capabilities and tools to improve efficiencies," he added.
According to the survey, virtualization remains the top investment priority for enterprises. While 40 percent of respondents have already embarked on virtualization over the last two years, 26 percent of respondents expect to invest in the technology between 2011 and 2012.
According to Toh, enterprises are starting to virtualize their mission-critical applications. Noting that virtualization is "the first step to cloud", Toh said he expects companies to slowly move their mission-critical applications to the cloud as cloud computing matures.