If you’ve seen recent car ads, you know they’re as likely to promote applications and connections as they are styling and horsepower. But manufacturers aren’t the only ones pushing apps these days. Banks, airlines, restaurants—you name it—all are using them to attract and engage customers. This is the application economy; where every company is in the software business, and user experience is the new survival of the fittest.

Take too long to bring an app to market, or cause even the slightest lag in load time, and you lose your customers to competitors. In fact, 25 percent of users will abandon apps after just a three-second response delay. But, give customers what they want when they want it, and the market is yours.

What fuels the app experience is an optimally performing IT infrastructure. One weak link in the network or server not only disrupts usability, but causes exponential, far-reaching damage to a brand once that issue goes viral. And as the traditional infrastructure evolves to support cloud storage, big data initiatives, mobility, distributed environments and other emerging technologies, the links multiply as do the potential points of failure.