Companies are facing increasingly difficult challenges maintaining their mission-critical web applications. While IT organizations are under pressure to keep costs down, the complexity of managing the configurations of those applications requires a heavy workload. Hurwitz & Associates conducted a web-based survey of 249 companies to determine the impact of complex Java EE web application development, modification and deployment. The study uncovered three primary issues that organizations are facing as they cope with this complexity:

• When web applications need to be modified, developers are required to modify existing deployment scripts. These scripts are typically poorly managed and not well controlled.
• Because changes in scripts can cause unexpected downtime, more people are required to track errors.
• Transcription errors within scripts lead to many unanticipated errors.