Symantec publishes results of survey on business application performance slowdowns

Corporate IT Update, August 31, 2006

CORPORATE IT UPDATE-(C)1995-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Information security provider Symantec Corp (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced on Wednesday (30 August) the findings of a survey indicating that business application slowdowns affect business productivity, customer loyalty, and employee morale.

According to the survey, conducted in July 2006, common impacts of business application performance slowdowns include slow response to user commands, delays in business transactions or processes, and slow loading web pages.

The results of the survey show that 24% of IT staff time is devoted to addressing business application performance delays, while in complex business application environments, delays can be caused by changes or updates required to keep pace with end user demand. In addition, 76% of the IT managers surveyed acknowledged that persistent delays would affect customer loyalty to their organizations.

The survey also found that out of the 200 consumers polled, 93% engaged in online shopping. Of those engaging in online shopping, 86% stated that frequent delays in their transactions such as shopping, travel, and banking would affect their loyalty to the service provider. In addition, 18% of the respondends claimed that slow online performance would cause them to switch to a competitor or abandon the transaction.

Symantec believes businesses should take an end-to-end approach to application performance management, enabling the identification and correction of problems before they affect the application user's experience.

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