Compuware Corporation has announced the results of a study commissioned by it and conducted by Forrester Consulting. One of the key finding of the study was that while 81 percent of organisations have adopted formal service level agreements (SLAs), they only meet these agreements 74 percent of the time on average. Furthermore, many companies also report that poor application performance results in increased costs and lost revenue. In the study, Forrester Consulting concludes that the primary reason for missing SLAs is that the business unit has expectations out of the reach of IT.

A key reason given for this mismatch in expectations is the use of service level metrics that are IT-centric and are not compatible with business objectives. The Forrester study found that 41 percent of respondents agreed that their insight into service levels is basic, and that they don't provide SLA information to executives on a regular basis. In addition, 40 percent of those surveyed agreed that their service level reporting lacks information that their executives have requested.

"By relying solely on technology-focussed metrics, IT is missing an opportunity to engage in effective dialogue with the business to move toward proactive service management," said Steve Tack, vice president, ITSM, Compuware.

According to Tack, end-user experience (EUE) monitoring addresses these challenges by providing IT with visibility into the quality of service from the end user's perspective. EUE allows IT to communicate more effectively with the business, establish realistic and shared expectations and effectively prioritise efforts according to business impact.

According to Jean-Pierre Garbani, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research, "The ultimate judge of IT and business alignment is the end user. If alignment is viewed as conformity to user expectations in terms of availability, performance, usability, and accuracy, then monitoring end user performance is the only way IT knows that it is meeting these expectations". (The Forrester Wave: Application Based End-User Experience Monitoring, Q2 2007, Forrester Research, June 2007).

When asked about the cost of poor application performance, 57 percent of respondents in the commissioned study stated increased costs to the business as a result; 48 percent reported that poor performance resulted in lost revenue. This demonstrates a clear understanding of the potentially dramatic financial impact resulting from poorly managed IT service. Other reasons given for financial impact to the business include negative impacts to external customer satisfaction (48 percent), slows or stops in production (42 percent), and a negative impact on sales performance.

The Forrester-authored study with analysis of the results is available at http://www.compuware.com/slmstudy.