Complex Systems Lead to Complex Problems

Over the next few posts, we thought we’d take a look at the top factors that make the job of IT Operations teams so difficult. We like to call them “The Perfect Storm” in IT Operations. There are four factors that contribute to this, and the first is complexity of systems.

In our research we’ve found that IT production environments have lots of “moving” parts that need to be accounted for in order to keep things running smoothly. Specifically, 83% of application stacks contain at least three tiers - web servers, application servers, and database servers. Each tier holds certain components from different vendors’ applications, operating systems and servers.

Complexity is a good thing, because this normally accompanies flexibility and other benefits to the business that IT is trying to support. The problem is this: complexity can also make it more difficult for IT operations teams to understand where problems originate when something goes wrong. This has a tendency to cause IT Operations teams to be very conservative about anybody touching their environments.

What is causing the complexity? There are a number of causes, such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), Web 2.0, regulatory compliance, and overall business demands for improved service and lower IT costs.

Again, these are good things for IT, but they make management of the infrastructure stack that supports business applications very difficult. The smallest patch here or there can impact an entire company and cause a whole host of unexpected problems.

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Filed Under: IT Operations, IT Operations Research, Virtualization