Manufacturers experiencing critical IT problems, says new study

The study, conducted by Easynet Global Services in collaboration with Ipanema Technologies found that business critical applications such as ERP systems were most likely to suffer performance problems The demands being placed on manufacturing networks were also increasing, the study found, with 87% of IT professionals in manufacturing seeing the requirements of their corporate network increase by at least 10% a year. To help cope with the increase in demand, manufacturing organisations were spending more each year on their corporate networks. The research showed that 57% of firms increased their networking budget during the last 12 months. Easynet MD Adrian Thirkill said, "The results of this study suggest that manufacturers are struggling with IT management and fighting to reduce instances of application slowness or non-responsiveness. If an ERP system is down for a mere five minutes each day the company is losing around 1% of overall productivity. "Simply throwing additional network capacity at this problem won't fix it. Manufacturers need a more thorough understanding of what's happening across their networks with the ability to manage the performance of those applications that really matter."