SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 13, 2017) - PagerDuty, the leader in digital operations management, today announced the findings of its inaugural State of Digital Operations Report, which revealed consumers' high expectations for digital applications and service performance, and the resulting challenges that can impact an IT organization's ability to resolve customer-impacting incidents quickly -- preserving brand loyalty and revenue. The report's findings were based on a two-part survey of over 300 IT personnel in development and operations as well as over 300 consumers. Results indicate that although IT professionals (e.g. developers, DevOps and IT operations teams) feel confident in their IT organization's ability to deliver seamless digital experiences, many organizations still experience frequent operational hurdles that lead to customer-impacting IT incidents and unmet customer expectations. Additional findings pointed to best practices and strategies, such as DevOps, monitoring and other modern development methods and tools for overcoming digital operations challenges.
In the State of Digital Operations survey, digital services were defined as those offered through digital interfaces, such as computers, tablets and smartphones, spanning both professional services, as well as those used for personal reasons. Consumers' everyday lives are surrounded by digital services -- from the way they order groceries to the way they pay bills or coordinate transportation. These services provide a convenient way to complete everyday tasks, and as a result, customers' expectations for always-on, user-friendly digital experiences have reached new heights. Consequently, IT teams that manage these digital offerings are faced with a number of new operational and technological challenges to deliver on the promise of a seamless digital experience. According to IDC, by 2020, 50 percent of the Global 2000 will see the majority of their business depend on their ability to create digitally enhanced products, services and experiences.1
The Digital Services Expectation Gap
The survey of 300 IT personnel in development and operations found that resolving consumer-impacting incidents takes IT teams approximately double the amount of time consumers are willing to wait for a service that isn't performing properly:
- Nearly 70 percent of consumer respondents stated that they will leave a digital app or service in under 15 minutes or less if it is unresponsive or slow.
- Meanwhile, more than one third of IT respondents reported that it takes an average of 30 minutes or longer to resolve these issues.
This expectation gap can not only cost organizations millions of dollars in revenue, but can also seriously impact customer loyalty.
"Consumers' increasing reliance on digitally-dependent services has caused the roles of development and ITOps to shift, bringing them closer to the front lines of customer experience and more directly tied to the value businesses can deliver their customers," said Jennifer Tejada, CEO, PagerDuty. "Just minutes of downtime can mean millions lost in revenue, making it more critical than ever to ensure IT teams are well-equipped to handle the complexities of digital businesses with modern development and operations tactics. It's time to support developers in driving better business outcomes through insights, investment in toolchains and context to empower optimal real-time decisions."
IT Readiness Perception vs. Reality
The State of Digital Operations survey showed that IT professionals' perception of their organizations' readiness to deploy, manage and maintain digital services does not align with the high frequency of consumer-facing IT incidents they currently face:
- Of the nearly 84 percent of IT personnel who claimed to be confident their organization is well-prepared to support digital services, more than half experience customer-impacting incidents (slowness or downtime) at least one or more times a week.
- Many respondents noted that their top digital operations challenges are tied to increased complexity, which results in more cognitive load and the proliferation of IT tools used to manage digital services.
Solving Digital Disruption Challenges
Many IT professionals are adopting modern development methods and tools to address the challenges of digital operations and consumer expectations:
- According to IT organizations, DevOps practices reign supreme among those who feel prepared to effectively support digital offerings, with incident management, continuous delivery and agile identified as other common practices.
- The State of Digital Operations Report also indicated that monitoring tools play a critical role in helping organizations support digital service offerings effectively.
"As consumer usage of digital services continues to increase and competition among businesses intensifies, the bar for IT performance rises in tandem," said Tim Armandpour, Senior Vice President of Product Development, PagerDuty. "To prepare for this new reality, it is critical that organizations employ the right digital operations strategies and begin narrowing the gap between IT performance and their customers' expectations of the digital experience."
The complete 2017 State of Digital Operations Report is available for download at https://www.pagerduty.com/digital-ops.
1IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2017 Predictions
About PagerDuty
PagerDuty is the leading digital operations management platform for businesses. Through its SaaS-based platform, PagerDuty empowers developers, DevOps, IT operations and business leaders to prevent and resolve business-impacting incidents for exceptional customer experience. More than 8,000 small, mid-size and enterprise global customers such as NBC Universal, Lululemon, IBM and Panasonic use and trust PagerDuty to maximize their time and increase their business response and efficiency. When revenue and brand reputation depends on customer satisfaction, PagerDuty arms businesses with the insight to proactively manage incidents and events that may impact customers across their IT environment. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company was recently listed in the 2016 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 500 and Forbes Cloud 100 lists.
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Kim Gengler
PagerDuty