Majority of Companies Surveyed Say Automation Issues Drive Breaches in SLAs

SAN JOSE, Calif., January 9, 2024 – Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) today announced the findings of a new research survey examining workload automation. The survey found 98 percent of respondents report automation issues are contributing to breaches in SLAs which in turn lead to increased costs, reduced revenue, and lower customer satisfaction. Notably, more than 60 percent note SLA breaches are a monthly occurrence. Survey findings also point to a clear need for more integrated automation and observability tools to provide visibility and key data to stakeholders.

“Simplification is the key to successful workload automation, as too many tools create an overly complicated environment while not addressing the observability needed to be proactive and not reactive,” said Aline Gerew, Head of Automation, Agile Operations Division, Broadcom. “End-to-end visibility and predictive tools will enable businesses to reduce the impact of issues, resulting in improved business outcomes.”

Tool Sprawl Negatively Impacts Issue Resolution and Visibility

The majority of companies surveyed use at least three automation platforms and three or more observability solutions. Not surprisingly, for 7 out of 10 companies, the issues raised by these tools result in ‘alert storms’, which obscure the root cause issues and delay resolution. Despite having numerous tools at their disposal, nearly three quarters report they don’t have end-to-end visibility of their automated business processes, and 67 percent lack visibility across their data center and cloud environments.

Companies Unable to Predict or Prevent Automation Issues

More than half (56%) of respondents are blind to the downstream effects of an initial alert and do not inform response teams which systems, jobs, applications, and business processes are affected. This is a problem for several reasons. Without an understanding of the downstream effect of an alert, 68 percent of respondents are unable to prioritize issues to prevent an SLA breach. In fact, only 28 percent have tools with predictive trending and threshold alerting to enable the prevention of automation issues. The inability to predict and prevent issues that lead to SLA non-compliance is a significant concern. As a senior vice president of technology for a financial services company put it, "Automation jobs are absolutely critical to our business remaining compliant and meeting regulatory requirements. Violations from missing deadlines can cost millions.”

Automation Intelligence Key to Support Optimization

Given that 88 percent of respondents indicated SLA breaches directly impacted customers in a significant way, there is a clear need to prevent automation issues that impact customer satisfaction. The research findings demonstrate that most companies’ automation and observability approach is ineffective, and worse, subjects the business to unnecessary risk. Companies need fewer solutions and ones that provide end-to-end visibility across all environments and all automated business processes.

Key Findings

Automation Issues and SLA Breaches Increase Costs, Reduce Revenue, and Impact Customer Satisfaction

• 98% report automation issues drive breaches in SLAs
• 61% report SLA breaches monthly or more frequently
• SLA breaches affect several critical business metrics, especially customer satisfaction

Many Automation and Observability Solutions Fail to Provide Needed Visibility and Critical Data

• 80% of companies use three or more automation platforms
• 74% use three or more observability tools
• 74% of companies suffer ‘alert storms’ that obscure causes and delay remediation of automation issues
• 74% of companies do not have end-to-end visibility for their automated business process
• 68% cannot predict whether an automation delay will result in an SLA breach
• Only 28% have tools that predict and prevent automation issues

Automation Intelligence Needed to Optimize Business Operations

• 69% of companies lack the data to properly optimize workloads
• Only 55% provide visibility of SLAs and key metrics in a format designed for business stakeholders
• 61% have no way to simulate automation workloads before implementation and validate SLAs and key metrics can be met

To learn more about the survey findings, download the full report here.

Methodology

Executives and team members for automation and observability at companies of all sizes representing all seniority levels were invited to participate in a survey on their automation tools and practices. The survey was administered electronically by a third party, and participants were offered a token compensation for their participation. A total of 501 qualified participants from five continents completed the global survey.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including data center, networking, enterprise software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial. Our solutions include data center networking and storage, enterprise, mainframe, and cyber security software focused on automation, monitoring and security, smartphone components, telecoms, and factory automation. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

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