Take control of your releases with a free, instant demo.

Launch Now

The Cost of Inefficient Test Environment Management

14
AUGUST, 2017

by Ashley Hosking

 

Do you know how much inefficient Test Environment Management is costing you?

One thing that stands out from our discussions with organisations in Asia Pacific, North America and Europe is the distinct lack of awareness when it comes to how much Non Production Environments can cost an organisation.

When it comes to Controlling Test Environment Costs, most organisations still manage their environments inefficiently through the use of manual, error prone and decentralised methods such as spreadsheets, email and shoehorned intranet sites which doesn’t help a large organisation run the day to day operations efficiently, let alone provide any meaningful decision making capability for driving proactive innovation through the organisation.

Now this may not sound like such a big deal when Non-Production is effectively the “ugly step child” of Production right? Well, when you consider some industry statistics the importance of the story starts to show;

  • Over 50% of an organisation’s Infrastructure, Licencing and associated Services spend is for Non Production environments;
  • 95% of Organisations have no idea what their environments look like;
  • 20% of Development and Test cycle productivity is lost due to Test Environment Issues, which leads to the last one;
  • The #1 cause of IT project delays, late time to market and release related issues are Non-Production Environments and Test Data;

Speaking from prior experiences while working on a billion dollar transformation programme, each delay cost the programme half a million dollars per day. Test cycles were often delayed by weeks, sometimes months, often due to inefficient Test Environments not being fit for purpose or instability caused by poorly coordinated deployments and change, all managed in spreadsheets and email.

One of the main issues is no one knew what the Non Production environments looked like and you can’t manage what you don’t know.

 

When you consider all of the above and that technology is the backbone of any organisation, inefficiencies can cost an organisation up to 5% of it’s overall IT spend.

The story and importance of effective Test Environments Management hits the bottom line of how well an organisation is performing for it’s customers, employees and ultimately it’s shareholders.

enov8 have charged themselves with delivering a unique solution to the problem with it’s IT and Test Environments Management platform, EcoSystem.

enov8’s EcoSystem is an extensible IT and Test Environment Management Platform inclusive of;

  • Holistic Release Management;
  • Agile at Scale Operations;
  • Streamlined and Advanced Integration;
  • Holistic Test Data Management;
  • Data Center and Cloud Migration.

Promoting Transparency, Control & Productivity.

See how much you could save by addressing these inefficiencies via our The Enov8 ROI Calculator.

 

Other TEM Reading

Interested in reading more about Test Environment Management. Why not start here:

Enov8 Blog: Enterprise IT Environment : What it is and how to define yours?

Enov8 Blog: IT Environments : What they are and which do you need?

 

 

Relevant Articles

MongoDB Clone Database Explained

MongoDB Clone Database Explained

Every engineering team relies on MongoDB cloning, but very few do it safely at scale. What starts as a simple way to copy data often turns into security risks, rising costs, and inconsistent environments. Cloning a MongoDB database is used to create safe,...

Data Anonymization Tools: 9 to Know About in 2026

Data Anonymization Tools: 9 to Know About in 2026

A common risk in modern software delivery is using copies of production data for development and testing. These environments rely on realistic datasets but often include sensitive customer, financial, or health data that should not leave production systems. Data...

Postgres Data Masking: A Guide to Securing PostgreSQL Test Data

Postgres Data Masking: A Guide to Securing PostgreSQL Test Data

PostgreSQL stores sensitive data such as customer profiles, financial transactions, and authentication records. This data is often copied into lower environments for development, testing, and analytics. The issue is that these environments aren’t designed to safely...

PII Risk in AI Is an Architecture Problem

PII Risk in AI Is an Architecture Problem

AI is moving rapidly from experimentation into enterprise scale. Use cases are expanding, agents are emerging, and data is being pushed into pipelines at increasing speed. At the same time, organisations are trying to keep up with the associated risk. The response is...

What Is Enterprise Architecture Governance? A Complete Guide

What Is Enterprise Architecture Governance? A Complete Guide

Enterprise architecture rarely fails because of bad technology. It fails because of too many good decisions made in isolation. Modern enterprises operate across cloud platforms, SaaS tools, legacy systems, APIs, and data environments that evolve independently. This...