CIOs Should Check MIPS Consumption To Regulate Cost

Compuware Corporation recently released the results of a survey that revealed valuable details for IT leaders seeking information on how they can address the increased MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second) consumption, which is one of the key factors leading to increased IT costs. The survey also revealed that though the costs associated with MIPS shoot up consistently, almost 58% of IT executives do not continually monitor MIPS usage in their organisation, and 43% believe that their organisations are ineffective in managing MIPS.

In an exclusive with Biztech2.0, Bruce Klenk, director - Product Management, Compuware Corporation, explains how CIOs/ CTOs can keep a check on their organisation’s MIPS consumption and thus regulate the rising costs.

What are the major factors influencing MIPS consumption in an organisation?

Business growth, acquisitions and mergers, new applications and newer releases of system software with additional functionality are often considered acceptable causes of MIPS growth. However, things like inefficient code / database calls, resource creep, new technologies, recurring errors and defects, plus the complexity of cross platform integration are all examples of forces that often consume excessive and unnecessary MIPS resources and force companies to purchase more processing power than they actually need.

How can companies check on their MIPS consumption?

Most organisations are aware of their overall MIPS consumption as a normal course of business. Some in the organisation are aware of the physical purchase of additional MIPS over time - particularly mainframe MIPS, and the CIO would be aware of the rising costs in their IT budget, driven largely by the hardware and software costs associated with MIPS. What they may not be aware of is the root causes for the increased MIPS consumption, both intended and unintended, and the impact it has on their budgets. They may also not be aware of the opportunity to slow MIPS growth creep and have a positive impact on the IT budget.

To determine the full impact of growing MIPS consumption, an organisation should first establish a baseline consumption level and monitor its growth against the legitimate additional demand placed on their systems. Some companies benchmark MIPS growth against business growth. One company, who has since become a Compuware customer, saw a 30% MIPS growth while the business was growing at 17% a year.

How important is it for a CIO to keep a regular check on MIPS consumption?

According to the recent survey sponsored by Compuware, more than 80% of respondents rate improving the quality of applications in terms of response and availability, and improving IT productivity as important. Almost 80% say that improving end-user response time is important, and almost 70% say that delaying or reducing CPU upgrades is important. All of these factors can be positively affected by actively managing MIPS. However, only 31% and 30% of the respondents, respectively, keep track of application performance and application failures associated with MIPS consumption.

Growing MIPS consumption is one of the major cost centres (hardware/software) within IT. By better understanding the growth in MIPS consumption and taking efforts to slow or halt that growth, a CIO can control the costs associated with MIPS growth more effectively. Industry analysts estimate that the addition of one MIP can cost between $4,000 and $15,000.

How can CIOs control recurring application failures and poor performance?

The first step in controlling application failures and poor performance is by adopting a method to proactively monitor performance and application faults - two of the root causes for the growth in MIPS consumption. Once the biggest offenders are pinpointed, the organisation can implement best practices to effectively address the issue, including the use of performance analysis and fault management tools.

What is Compuware doing to help the industry manage MIPS better?

Compuware’s Application MIPS Management solution is designed to assist organisations reduce costs or slow rapidly growing IT expenditures by analysing and ultimately reducing the growth in MIPS consumption. A Compuware customer recently reported that they saved 160 MIPS by using Compuware’s Application MIPS Management solution, saving the company a minimum of $640,000.

For organisations currently involved in application performance or fault management, the Compuware Application MIPS Management solution can help further reduce MIPS consumption. Organisations with seemingly little change in legacy applications as well as those using emerging technologies that tend to trigger increased CPU usage, such as WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Application Server, DB2 DDF and Java can benefit greatly from the Compuware solution.

How can MIPS Management solution help CIOs?

For many CIOs, hardware and software costs represent one of the largest components of their IT budgets. These costs are driven by MIPS consumption; MIPS consumption is driven by CPU usage, and CPU usage is driven by application code. To control MIPS consumption, CIOs need to start measuring application performance and faults—both of which can use up large quantities of CPU time when problems occur.