About 56 percent of businesses in the Asia-Pacific region feel that their business and IT objectives are not aligned, according to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in October.

Some 570 senior executives in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the United States took part in the BMC Software-commissioned survey. About 200 of the respondents were from the region.

In Europe and the United States, fewer than half of the respondents in felt that IT was not aligned with their business objectives. Fifty-six percent and 64 percent of U.S. and European respondents, respectively, indicated that their organization's IT objectives matched their business objectives.

"In today's environment, IT and business are inseparable and yet many organizations are still struggling to align the two," said Tom Schodorf, BMC Software's vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, in a statement. "This ultimately jeopardizes an organization's ability to expand and compete in a rapidly changing global market."

Lack of or insufficient IT investment, failure of top management to understand how IT can aid the business, and the IT department's inability to understand its role in enhancing the business were cited as the top three obstacles that prevent organizations in Asia from effectively aligning IT with business.

The survey also found that IT performance is mostly measured quantitatively by businesses in the region. The most popular ways of gauging whether IT is effective is through the ability to cut costs, contribution to revenue growth and return on investment.

Schodorf said as more organizations in the region acknowledge that the "failure to align IT with the business will cost them dearly", the adoption of business service management (BSM) will "rapidly accelerate". BSM is a suite of IT service management tools provided by BMC.