Improving Incident Response Building A More Efficient IT Infrastructure

Transcription

1 A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Emulex February 2014 Improving Incident Response Building A More Efficient IT Infrastructure

2 Table Of Contents Executive Summary: Optimizing The Performance/Cost Equation... 1 Improving Workforce Productivity And Managing Costs... 2 Business Service Performance Challenges... 5 Finding A Better Solution... 8 Key Recommendations Appendix A: Methodology Appendix B: Supplemental Material Appendix C: Demographics/Data Appendix D: Endnotes ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING Forrester Consulting provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders succeed in their organizations. Ranging in scope from a short strategy session to custom projects, Forrester s Consulting services connect you directly with research analysts who apply expert insight to your specific business challenges. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting. 2014, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. For additional information, go to [1-MAJQSS]

3 1 Executive Summary: Optimizing The Performance/Cost Equation Emulex commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the issues surrounding the management of IT transactions, applications, and business services. In conducting a survey of 158 IT professionals with direct responsibility for business-critical applications, Forrester found that all enterprises surveyed had fundamental issues while managing the performance of these applications and business services. Network performance and network security are at the center of application quality of service: During Cyber Monday, a major UK bank experienced a network issue that prevented most of its customers from using ATMs, accessing their online account, or making card payments. As the network problems persisted for quite some time, the bank is expected to pay hundreds of millions of British pounds to compensate its customers, all because its IT management practices are outdated, and a lack of investments in the right tool set is at the root of the current issues. 1 KEY FINDINGS Forrester s study yielded three key findings: Improving workforce productivity and managing costs are key business objectives. IT plays an important role in business workforce productivity and is expected to provide a quality of service in line with business demands while constantly reducing the budget. Network and security issues are two of the main factors affecting end user productivity. Because it is difficult to receive meaningful alerts and precise information on the localization of performance issues, time is wasted in IT, resources are consumed, and the business bottom line is affected. Network visibility is a foundational tool to enable remediation. Providing visibility into network traffic lets IT operations pinpoint the location of components at fault in delivering business services. This is seen as an ideal solution to foster better and more effective cooperation between IT operations teams. Each evolution of application technology and business services has brought another level of complexity and a greater level of dependency on networks. Yet, traditional IT management processes and tools for the data center do not provide the necessary network visibility in the area of performance prediction and remediation. Our survey data shows a number of approaches to improve the situation: 1) rapidly identifying the components at fault and the root cause of problems; 2) using tools that provide network visibility to localize components at fault; and 3) promoting teamwork that results in a rapid localization of problems to specific hardware or software components. Our survey shows that a majority (56%) of the IT operations can resolve less than 75% of performance and availability problems in 24 hours and that application performance issues are a major cause of business productivity loss.

4 2 Improving Workforce Productivity And Managing Costs At the heart of business is the notion of profit: increasing market presence and acquiring new markets through better business processes and innovation while improving workforce productivity and managing costs. In a business context, IT is a tool that helps automate business processes and improve market presence and innovation through better and faster information flow. Because workforce productivity is a major business focus, the cost of IT as well as the business consequences of IT service lapses have to be managed and contained as tightly as possible (see Figure 1). The exponential growth of technology and a constant reduction of hardware unit prices have brought fundamental changes in the way IT supports business interactions. The traditional IT which once catered to the needs of the corporation by keeping the corporate house in order what Forrester calls systems of record is now supplemented by more and more applications that focus on facilitating the tasks of people: what we call systems of engagement (see Figure 2). As a consequence, transaction volumes increase dramatically, while complexity is magnified with the connections required between the two systems. IT infrastructure and business services, as well as the corresponding organizational structure, exist solely to support business processes. This is not an easy feat. On one hand, the economic value of IT as a business tool requires more and more sophisticated functions that must be provided at a near constant level of service. On the other hand, the cost of delivering these functions has to be constantly reduced to maintain a competitive business value. Technology progress has played a major disruptive role which has translated to increased complexity for IT operations professionals. IT is not only tasked with delivering current business services at the highest quality level and the lowest possible cost, it is also required to absorb the new technology and innovate. In this context, the performance of business services and their underlying applications and transactions are key to users, employees, and clients productivity. IT applications FIGURE 1 Key Business Priorities Over The Next 12 Months Which of the following initiatives are likely to be your organization s top business priorities over the next 12 months? (Select all that apply) Improve workforce productivity Improve quality of products and/or processes Improve business flexibility and resilience Lower the company s overall operating costs Grow overall company revenue Improve customer satisfaction Comply with government regulations and requirements Streamline business operations and consolidate business units Acquire and retain customers Improve corporate environmental sustainability and social responsibility Grow in emerging markets Improve the company s ability to innovate Hire, develop, and retain the best employees Acquire and retain talent Drive new market offerings or business practices Re-engineer core business processes Improve/simplify our supply chain Address rising competition for our products and services 17% 15% 1 1 9% 9% 7% 2 26%

5 3 FIGURE 2 Systems Of Engagement Versus Systems Of Record Source: Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement, Forrester Research, Inc., February 13, 2012 increase productivity by allowing more units of work to be processed by unit of time. It also affects the business brand that sustains enterprises business reputation and helps them compete more effectively in their respective markets. For example, it is clear that the Cyber Monday failure in a major UK bank damaged the bank s reputation far beyond the monetary damages incurred. At the center of this more efficient IT infrastructure, the network plays an important role, not only as a way to improve or maintain productivity, but also as a way to contain costs (see Figure 3). New business initiatives introduce an extra layer of complexity to an already complex series of business services based on the interactions between systems of record and systems of engagement. As a consequence, networks grow in importance relative to the overall infrastructure not only as the backbone supporting client interactions, but also as the highway between all aggregated applications that constitute a business service. The impact of the network on business initiatives becomes more important than ever before, as do the business expectations that are built on it (see Figure 4). The business dependency on networks and on network security means that performance lapses absolutely have an impact on the enterprise. Business productivity loss is of course the first consequence; IT productivity is most certainly impacted as it has to spend unplanned resources on finding these performance issues. The tight coupling between business results and IT service levels implies a strong dependency of the former on the latter, and the benefits of IT services can very quickly be nullified by poor service quality. Our number one priority, as our CIO says, is to keep the lights on because we re serving the banking community, so it s got to be up. Problems and downtime absolutely have a very deep impact. Our deepest issue isn t that we are down; it is our reputation we are concerned about. Security officer, federal banking agency

6 4 FIGURE 3 IT Infrastructure Supports Productivity Improvements Through More Efficient Network Technologies In regard to the value that IT infrastructure brings to the business, rate the network s impact on the following business values. No impact Significant impact 5 Don t know Streamline business operations and consolidate business units 2 39% 3 Grow overall company revenue Lower the firm s overall operating costs Improve workforce productivity 6% % 35% 45% 46% % Improve quality of products and/or processes Acquire and retain talent 7% 2 25% 4 37% 29% Improve your customer relationships 6% 2 4 Acquire and retain customers Comply with government regulations and requirements 9% 5% 7% 19% 25% 37% 3 FIGURE 4 The Business Expectations Based On Networks In regard to the value that IT infrastructure brings to the business, rate the network s impact on the following business values. (cont.) No impact Significant impact 5 Don t know Drive new market offerings or business practices Improve our ability to innovate as an organization Improve business flexibility and resilience faster time-tomarket, quicker response to changing business conditions Improve corporate environmental sustainability and social responsibility Move from costs from capital to operating expense categories 6% 6% 5% % 40% % 39% 26% 25% 2 2 Expand into new geographic markets Re-engineer core business processes 9% 1 20% 30% 39% 35% 2 2 Acquire other companies or divest parts of existing business operations/units 9% 37% 17%

7 5 Business Service Performance Challenges Technology evolution doubles the capacity and performance of components every two years. The consequence has been clearly stated by the late Watts Humphrey, who reached the conclusion a few years ago that software size is multiplied by 10 every five years, and in fact follows a corresponding exponential growth as hardware does. This has a direct impact on the number of problems in applications. For example, Watts Humphrey commented that if the development process does not evolve in parallel with the size of software, the ratio of errors per thousand of lines of code will tend to stay constant, meaning that the total number of errors in an application effectively doubles every two years. 2 On top of this, the complexity created by new systems of engagement, based on increasingly powerful mobile technologies, becomes a major factor in application and business service quality. For example, a majority of IT security organizations consider complexity a challenge (see Figure 5). In a follow-up question, a majority of respondents cited network security as having the greatest potential impact on business initiatives (5), closely followed by planning and FIGURE 5 IT Infrastructure Complexity Is Challenging Please rate the following IT security challenges in your firm. (Complexity of our IT environment) management in virtual environments (49%). (see Figure 6). It shouldn t come as a surprise then that security and network difficulties have a huge impact on business service performance and are critical issues that cost enterprises millions in lost revenue and reputation (see Figure 7). Among the critical industrial processes, IT is probably the only one where control and management is seen as an afterthought. Blame it on product vendors or on immature clients, but managing business services takes a back seat to developing critical functions aligned with business requirements. But as the application is actually the automation of a critical business process, service continuity deserves a priority level as high as the pure functional aspects. Issues with an application, whether born from security, network capacity sizing, or configuration errors, manifest themselves in production. As these errors are related to specific parts of the service delivery engine, they tend not come up at the same time; they appear haphazardly, as a consequence of the particular environment of a business process phase. This creates a business and IT crisis that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible to avoid productivity and business losses. As a result, there is a rush to select a magic bullet that resolves the particular problem du jour. As issues appear in one corner of the infrastructure, tools are acquired to solve that specific problem, resulting in a proliferation of management solutions specifically oriented toward a particular silo of hardware or software technology. Enterprises end up in a situation where tools are not uniformly deployed on the infrastructure, and are used in technology competency silos a situation that does not promote cooperation between IT groups (see Figure 8). Major challenge Challenge Minor challenge Not a challenge 20% 30% 37% Performance, scalability, security, visibility, and forensics, etc., I think we need all that. It needs to be up and running, and secure and we need to know that it is. Security officer, federal banking agency Base: 1,348 US IT security professionals (answers of don t know omitted) Source: Forrsights Workforce Employee Survey, Q2 2012, Forrester Research, Inc.

8 6 FIGURE 6 Network Impact On Business Initiatives When thinking specifically about the network and supporting your data center initiatives, which, if any, of the following aspects do you believe will impact your current applications or IT initiatives? Network security (firewalls, intrusion detection, encryption transport mechanisms, etc.) Network performance (large backplane, high speed links, wire speed, etc.) Network reliability (nonstop forwarding, seamless failover, redundant links, etc.) Network hardware costs Network virtualization functions (virtual switches, virtual routers, virtual load balancers, etc.) Network management Network convergence (storage, video, voice, other services onto Ethernet) Network operational costs % 49% 45% 4 4 Network scalability Network visibility and forensics Network programmability 3 36% 35% We don t believe the network impacts applications or services Don t know FIGURE 7 Performance Issues Have A Huge Impact On Business Results What are the primary impacts of brownouts (poor performance, such as response time, of an application) of your most critical application? Loss of business user productivity % Important loss of business revenue 2 20% 1 Client dissatisfaction with the company 16% 2 Loss of time and productivity in the IT department 1 17% Loss of confidence in the outcome of the business process supported by that application Loss of clients and business due to poor image 7% 9%

9 7 FIGURE 8 Challenges In Meeting Business Expectations For each of the following networking activities please indicate what your organization is currently doing. Not interested Interested but no plans Planning to implement We have done this, or are currently doing this Expanding/upgrading implementation Don t know Increase security hardware capabilities 15% 40% 3 Deploy security monitoring tools 10% 15% 4 2 Deploy monitoring tools 16% 47% Deploy or upgrade management, visibility, and automation 9% tools including management and orchestration tools Streamline and centralize policy management that covers 1 aspects including network, users, application, and location Deploy monitoring tools like monitoring aggregation switches 1 17% 16% 20% 4 39% 3 25% The multiplication of independent tools becomes a challenging proposition when teams are asked to cooperate to find a solution to a critical issue, or when simply trying to correlate data from different sources. Different tools reporting on different consoles, with no data normalization or time alignment between them, make it impossible to have a holistic view of problems. Consequently, IT operations are unable to resolve performance problems quickly enough to satisfy the business quality objectives. Although a large number of respondents (4) claimed that they can resolve more than 75% of problems within 24 hours, they do not resolve all problems. The most complex security and performance problems stay unresolved even in the best performing IT organizations (see Figure 9). We get many things resolved within 4 hours, and most issues in 24 hours. If we have a difficult bug, it could take up to a couple of months. Technical officer, network engineering firm FIGURE 9 Critical Performance Issues Are Not Resolved Within 24 Hours What percentage of your availability and performance problems are you able to satisfactorily diagnose and resolve within 24 hours? More than 75% Between 5 and 75% Between 26% and 50% Less than 25% Don t know Base: 158 US IT professionals who are significantly involved in data center and network infrastructure Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Emulex, November 2013

10 8 As a consequence, IT organizations are eager to improve their response to incidents and problems regarding performance and availability issues. The first step, for close to 60% of organizations, is to improve the process by which they treat incidents and problems (see Figure 10). IT operations waste significant resources tracking and correcting problems. On top of the business productivity loss and the damage to the brand, IT operations productivity is affected, as resources are called from their normal work to perform unplanned and unscheduled tasks. For IT, solving this or minimizing the waste of resources would result in a net gain of IT workforce productivity an improvement that any VP of operations would welcome. Finding A Better Solution Business services rely on IT functions that directly support a business process. If the link between a business process and the infrastructure is the application, then an application or a group of applications represents a business service, and application performance management is the capability to deliver service quality, provide levels of performance that are compatible with the business processes, and ensure that the data used in this process is available and not corrupted. This sounds like the primary objective of system management and IT operations since the dawn of time, and it actually is, but this goal has been promised many times and has never been really achieved by IT operations. 3 In a typical illustration of Zeno s paradox, application technologies forever precede management capabilities, and management solutions are most of the time aftermarket products purchased in a crisis reaction mode. 4 The consequence is that most IT operations organizations have become a collection of experts, each with a bag of tools mostly independent and incompatible. As application architectures evolve exponentially in complexity, experts are facing increasingly complex situations that overwhelm the analytic abilities of any single person. While most of the information needed to effectively manage the new application architectures may be collected by many products already available, gathering several experts and manually aggregating data from multiple sources into a meaningful view of a business service is at best extremely painful, resource intensive, and usually a complete waste of time. To improve the situation we must first analyze where time is wasted in resolving performance issues. FIGURE 10 Improving The Incident And Problem Management Process Is A First Step In terms of your organization s availability and performance management, which of the following areas would you say are most in need of improvement? Improve our incident and problem management process Implement better tools to manage availability and performance of our critical business services Receive meaningful performance and problem alerts before the end users are affected Integrate our tool set to receive better information 59% % Implement an end-to-end performance management solution 4 Improve the cooperation between teams when working on performance or availability issues 36% Don t know

11 9 Mean time to resolve (MTTR) is the measure of time taken to resolve issues. But MTTR itself can be divided into sub phases such as the time to identify a problem (MTTI), the time to know where the issue resides (MTTK), the time to fix this issue (MTTF), and the time to verify that we have effectively resolved the problem (MTTV). A quick analysis shows that MTTK is the part where most time is wasted in problem resolution (see Figure 11). I don t feel that I have enough visibility. At the higher level, there isn t full recognition... unless you know what s taking place at every single layer, you have some blinders on. You are not seeing the full picture. Our CIO is interested in performance monitoring, but not enough to fork out money for the requirements. If the incident and problem management process is the first step in improving the resolution of performance issues, it does not provide a solution to reduce MTTK. Actually, only tools that support the process offer a solution to rapid identification of issues. Looking at a typical process, we see that several levels of support are actually involved: level 1 for receiving first alerts, identifying issues, verifying known problems and workarounds, etc. (see Figure 12). Unknown incidents and problems need level 2 interventions. As IT organizations consist of multiple disciplines, we need to identify the person(s) actually in charge of the hardware or software element at fault. This is where time is wasted in MTTK: Many organizations will have a war room for critical issues, where everyone is represented and actually trying to exonerate themselves rather than contribute to a resolution. At this stage, a tool that quickly points a finger to where the problem is would help minimize wasted time and wasted resources. FIGURE 12 Typical Incident And Problem Management Process Network engineer, engineering company FIGURE 11 Where Do We Waste Time? (And Money) MTTR MTTI MTTK MTTF MTTV Mean time to identify Mean time to know Mean time to fix Mean time to verify How do we attack MTTK? Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Source: Realize Practical Application Performance Management, Forrester Research, Inc., February 27, 2013

12 10 Business service architecture provides an answer to the rapid identification issue in the previous example. As services are actually built from many cooperating applications, themselves distributed among different servers and databases, the network becomes a vantage point for end-to-end visibility. Understanding the transaction flow, the actual workload, and the way infrastructure components are responding to this workload, provides a complete view of the data center exchanges and of the performance of all elements whether hardware or software. This is clearly expressed in Figure 13. Thus a good management solution is one that provides reliable alerting to support level 1, monitoring of infrastructure components, visibility into the network for supporting level 2 in their identification of where the problems might be, and finally, at level 3, deep-dive analytic tools to understand the nature of the problem and find a resolution (see Figure 14). Many organizations have sourced tools that they find themselves unable to use because they lack the expertise. Thus, people are also an important part of the equation. I think we have some good tools and some poor tools. But in every case we lack the data to use the tools well. It s not necessarily the most effective use of the tool. I don t know exactly what we have, but whatever we have isn t working. Security officer, federal banking agency The next step, for a majority of IT organizations, is to improve incident response by adding forensic capabilities to their current tool set. Complete visibility into network performance and network security is greatly enhanced by having the ability to record and analyze the complete flow (see Figure 15). As technology growth shows no sign of slowing down in the coming years, an onslaught of demand is on the IT horizon. The challenges of the next five years call for a different approach to the increased complexity of future data centers. As business requirements mount, generations of technology FIGURE 13 MTTK Reduction Is Based On Network Visibility Why does your organization require network visibility? (Select all that apply) To improve operations and response To identify when a data breach is occurring To monitor application performance To improve our reporting capabilities To analyze traffic patterns and user behavior (e.g., flow data analysis) To meet compliance requirements To improve forensics investigations (e.g., packet capture and analysis, network metadata analysis) To find and track assets (e.g., network discovery) 56% 55% % 46% 45% Base: 142 US IT professionals who are significantly involved in data center and network infrastructure that have deployed network monitoring tools

13 11 have been implemented to try and stem the tide. The result: data centers characterized by complex, static physical configurations, incomplete virtualization efforts, and multiple silos of management. Adding public and private clouds as well as potential business-driven software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications will just add to this overwhelmingly complex environment. The only solution to bring this mix of new and legacy technology under control is to abstract this complexity through a management software structure that is adapted to the processes used in the IT organization. This understanding of process, tools, and skills integration is the best preparation for managing the ever-growing complex environment of tomorrow. FIGURE 15 Improving Incident Response And Forensic Capabilities Which of the following initiatives are likely to be your firm s/organization s top IT security priorities over the next 12 months? (Improve incident response and forensics capabilities) Critical priority High priority Low priority 3 40% Not on our agenda Base: 158 US IT professionals who are significantly involved in data center and network infrastructure Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Emulex, November 2013 FIGURE 14 Infrastructure And Network Monitoring Are Key Features Of A Good Solution What are the key features of an ideal monitoring/management solution? Monitoring the whole infrastructure for availability and performance 16% 17% 1 Monitoring the network from an application standpoint 1 1 Mapping applications to infrastructure components 15% 9% 15% Providing root-cause analysis tools 15% Integrating all monitoring data on a customizable dashboard to foster cooperation Discovering application to infrastructure dependencies 9% 7% Monitoring application servers (such as Java EE and.net) Integrating business metrics and IT operational metrics in a single dashboard Providing deep dive analysis of infrastructure and application components 1

14 12 Key Recommendations This study shows that network performance and network security issues have the greatest impact on business services performance problems and consequently on the enterprise bottom line, and that they are the most difficult issues to resolve. From the survey results and interviews conducted with IT infrastructure and security professionals, we can conclude that the lack of visibility into the network itself is central to the problem. While 4 of the survey respondents can resolve 75% of performance and security issues in less than 24 hours, this still leaves a number of unresolved problems that can linger for months, as shown in the UK bank example. These long-term persistent errors are not only disrupting the normal business flow, they also impact the enterprise reputation and consume an enormous amount of IT infrastructure and operations resources, reducing considerably the IT organization s productivity. Improving this situation requires the following: End-to-end visibility into infrastructure and operations. In today s infrastructure landscape, mature incident response is critical, yet it is somehow immature in many enterprises and IT organizations. Many times, tools are acquired on the spur of the moment, as a reaction to a specific incident. In multitier, complex applications involving many infrastructure moving parts, the network is the common denominator that provides an end-to-end view of traffic flow. The ability to collect accurate, time-stamped, and detailed data from the network provides the basis for incident investigation. As shown in this study, time to know (MTTK) is where time is wasted; and knowledge starts with the collection of relevant data. Network visibility is the right way to understand the end-toend behavior of infrastructures and applications. Collection and capture of network traffic details. The major obstacle to accurate data collection is the speed at which information transits on the network. Collecting detailed and time-aligned data requires a tool that is itself highly performing: By the time errors do manifest themselves, the key to understanding the issue may be long gone. The right tool for complex performance or security problem analysis needs to be always on, with the ability to go back in time to the incident origin. Ability to feed the collected data into forensic analysis tools. Data, especially in the context of persistent issues in a complex infrastructure, may need other tools to provide a thorough and complete problem analysis. An important feature of the end-to-end data collection tool must be the ability to feed data into deep analysis solutions to provide relevant information. In one interview, an infrastructure and operation professional commented, It s not really that we lack the ability to make sense of the issue, it s the fact that we lack the right data that is the problem.

15 13 Appendix A: Methodology In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 158 IT organizations with more than 1,000 employees in North America to evaluate the current state of application availability and performance, the consequences of availability and performance issues, and the desires for an ideal service management automation solution. Survey participants included IT decision-makers across all major industries with the responsibility for network systems and/or application delivery. Survey respondents were all significantly responsible for developing IT architecture, had self-managed data centers, and at least 50% of their x86-class servers are currently virtualized. The study began in August 2013 and was completed in November Appendix B: Supplemental Material RELATED FORRESTER RESEARCH Realize Practical Application Performance Management, Forrester Research, Inc., February 27, 2013 Turn Big Data Inward With IT Analytics, Forrester Research, Inc., December 5, 2012 Market Overview: Application Performance Management, Q4 2011, Forrester Research, Inc., December 7, 2011

16 14 Appendix C: Demographics FIGURE 16 Survey Demographics: Industry And Company Size Which of the following best describes the industry to which your company belongs? Using your best estimate, how many employees work for your firm/organization worldwide? Manufacturing and materials Education and nonprofits 16% 19% 20,000 or more employees 37% Financial services and insurance Healthcare Other (please specify) Government Business or consumer services 9% 6% 6% 1 5,000 to 19,999 employees 1,000 to 4,999 employees 16% 47% Electronics 6% Retail 5% Energy, utilities, and waste management Telecommunications services Construction Transportation and logistics Travel and hospitality Consumer product manufacturing Agriculture, food, and beverage

17 15 FIGURE 17 Survey Demographics: Title And IT Role Which title best describes your position at your organization? Which of the following describes your current role in IT? Manager (manage a team of functional practitioners) 30% IT infrastructure professional (e.g., server, storage, network, data center infrastructure) 90% Director (manage a team of managers and high-level contributors) 25% IT operations professional (e.g., server, storage, network, data center operations) 87% C-level executive (e.g., CEO, CMO) 2 IT security professional 8 Project manager (manage ad hoc project teams) 1 Information and knowledge management professional 7 Vice president (in charge of one/several large departments) Cloud infrastructure/operations/ architect 67% Full-time practitioner (work within a team or as an individual contributor) Solution/application architecture 6 Application development and delivery 59% Software testing and QA 5 Appendix D: Endnotes 1 Source: Mark Duell, Sean Poulter, Richard Marsden, and Simon Lambert, RBS and NatWest blame DECADES of scrimping on IT for Cyber Monday fiasco that EMPTIED customers bank accounts and left millions unable to access their money, Mail Online, December 3, 2013 ( 2 Watts Humphrey ( ) developed the Software Capability Maturity Model while working at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of Managing the Software Process, and was considered a worldwide authority in software engineering. Source: The Watts New? Collection: Columns by the SEI s Watts Humphrey, Carnegie Mellon University ( 3 IT management solutions are successful, but they follow the market appearance, by their nature, of the technology that they are managing. Source: Tech Horizons: The IT Management Software Market In 2013, Forrester Research, Inc., May 2, Zeno s Achilles paradox illustrates the hypothesis that a continuum (the evolution of technology) cannot be represented by a series of discrete events (the installation and use of management software solutions). Regardless of how fast solutions are brought to market, they are always behind the technology that they manage. Source: Zeno and the Paradox of Motion, MathPages (