BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - June 17, 2008) - The new benchmark report entitled "Managed
Network Services: Beyond Cost Savings and Uptime," by Aberdeen Group, a
Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS), found that Best-in-Class organizations are
three times more likely to be satisfied with the level of managed network
services they are currently using compared to Laggards. Aberdeen's research
also revealed that application availability, networking cost, and
application response times are the top three indicators that organizations
are using when evaluating the quality of managed network services.
The report shows that Best-in-Class organizations reported an 88% average
increase in application availability, a 30% average cost savings and all
improved application response times for business critical applications by
using managed network services.
"Aberdeen's research shows that even though organizations are able to
achieve strong benefits from outsourcing network management to a third
party, almost a half of these organizations are not fully satisfied with
the quality of service that they are receiving," said Bojan Simic, research
analyst, Aberdeen. "This is mostly due to the fact that organizational
goals for network management are rapidly changing and organizations are
expecting more than cost savings and network up-time, but are still
struggling to adjust SLAs to help them achieve these newly expanded goals."
Ninety-four percent of Best-in-Class organizations are reporting that they
are satisfied with managed network services that they are using, which is
mostly due to the fact that these organizations have deployed a mix of
solutions that allow them to monitor, analyze and optimize network and
application performance.
Aberdeen's research reveals that Best-in-Class organizations are two times
more likely to have services and tools for WAN acceleration as compared to
all others. The research also shows that Best-in-Class are 65% more likely
to use an integrated portal for visibility into all network services as
compared to Laggards. This contributed to Best-in-Class being four times
more likely to report an improvement in the level of SLA achievements as
compared to Laggards.
In this report, Aberdeen used three key performance criteria to distinguish
the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations:
application availability, Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) issues with network
performance, and application response times.
This report is derived from insights provided by 143
end-user organizations worldwide. Findings of this report should serve as
guidelines to other end-user organizations that are looking to outsource
network management to third party service providers for enabling a seamless
access to corporate data while reducing operational cost and improving
network up-time.
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the
following underwriters: Nortel and Virtela Communications. To obtain a
complimentary copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4886.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 AberdeenGroup, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617)854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Bojan Simic
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5281
bojan.simic@aberdeen.com