Adlex and Enterprise Management Associates Publish Report on 'Quality of Experience' as Next-Generation of Service Level Management.

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. -- Adlex ITvisibility Meets Growing Demand for Customer-Based IT Measurement

Adlex Inc.(TM), the pioneer in Service Delivery Management (SDM), and Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), the first technology analyst firm to specialize exclusively in management software and services, today issued a report on Quality of Experience (QoE) as a new approach to managing IT service delivery. The report, titled "Quality of Experience: a Foundation for Business-Driven IT Management," provides recommendations for implementing an IT management strategy that captures QoE metrics and measures IT service delivery based on the real customer experience, rather than technical metrics alone. A full copy of the report can be found on the Adlex Web site at www.adlex.com.

Based on EMA's research, 56% of corporations have no formal strategy for managing IT service levels, or the quality, availability and responsiveness of their applications. In contrast, all respondents viewed Service Level Management as very important. These conflicting statistics indicate that IT has awakened to the need for managing service quality, but has yet to adopt the newer, business-oriented metrics and methodologies that will help them achieve consistently high levels of customer satisfaction.

Traditionally, IT service levels have been measured according to technical attributes that are useful for monitoring the efficiency of the IT infrastructure, but are many steps removed from the actual customer experience. Recent EMA research shows that 87% of corporations still measure service delivery according to operational statistics from servers and network devices, rather than business-oriented metrics, with 67% focused only on network facilities. This failure to measure the actual customer experience leaves organizations at risk, because measuring only technical attributes of IT infrastructure can lead companies to falsely assume that they are delivering high quality service. EMA recommends new, customer-focused measurement techniques that manage IT based on metrics that characterize the quality of the customer experience with application and network service levels.

EMA's research results were gathered from a broad survey of hundreds of IT executives, as well as direct interviews with network and system applications professionals at enterprises and service providers to understand industry trends and customer needs.

"Today, a successful Service Level Management strategy means redefining the traditional notions for what constitutes service quality," said Dennis Drogseth of EMA. "Accurately measuring Quality of Experience requires new technology to directly measure IT service levels from a customer perspective, as well as leveraging advanced software, such as Adlex's ITvisibility, to detect and correct service problems before they impact the business."

Unlike performance tools that try to discern application performance and customer experience by using synthetic traffic, statistical samples, scraping server logs or polling infrastructure devices at various time intervals, Adlex's ITvisibility measures the actual experience of every user in real-time. It is the only solution today that delivers actual performance metrics for managing application service delivery across the entire public and private IT and network infrastructure, from Web servers in the data center, through the corporate LAN, Internet and out to the end-user.

"Based on EMA's research, as well as our own customer traction, it's clear that corporations recognize the need for measuring, and ultimately improving, the application experience of every customer," said Dave Zwicker, vice president of marketing for Adlex. "The advantages of directly measuring the IT service levels experienced by all users of all applications all of the time are numerous. Most importantly, IT departments can be far more effective at supporting strategic business goals such as increasing revenue and improving customer retention."

About Adlex

Founded in 1997, Adlex is a global company that pioneered Service Delivery Management (SDM) technology and is a market leader based on deployments with major enterprise and service provider customers worldwide. Adlex was funded by its founders and a group of private investors led by Roger Marino, co-founder of EMC Corp. and Adlex board member. The company is headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., and runs its European operations from a regional office in Gdansk, Poland. More information is available at www.adlex.com.