The transition from development to production is a risky one. Distributed applications that look good on the developer's bench often under-perform in the production environment. Even apparently innocuous changes to an application can cause big problems when they're introduced into production. These issues delay time-to-benefit, force costly eleventh-hour coding and infrastructure changes, and undermine IT's credibility.

The market for mobile services is taking shape as mobile providers offer customers capabilities that include Internet browsing, chat, multimedia downloads and online purchasing. These services promise to generate significant incremental revenue for providers, as customers embrace the next-generation mobile experience. They will also be important to other market beneficiaries – including content providers and online merchants – who see the affluent mobile user as an important target.

Server consolidation and data center moves can deliver significant benefits – including cost savings, enhanced business continuity, optimized service management, and improved regulatory compliance.

The impact of this physical displacement should not be underestimated. If you don't adequately understand and address the issues that arise when you put more physical distance between end-users and servers, you can set yourself up for serious pain and potential failure.

Here are four killer mistakes you should be particularly careful to avoid:

Businesses today are highly dependent on distributed applications to support every aspect of operations. If these applications under-perform for remote users or fail, losses of productivity, revenue and opportunity inevitably result. It is thus critical to ensure the consistent performance of applications across the network.