The following (untested) code should be closer to what you want:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @node_list = glob("/appl/perform/workspace/htdocs/node_reports/*/*"
+);
my $node = "";
my %needs_desc;

foreach my $file (@node_list) {
    next if $file =~ /^(?:\.\.? | lost\+found)$/x;
    
    my ($node, $filename) = (split /\//, $file)[6,7];
    my $pattern = "business_use\.$node";

    $needs_desc{$node} = 0;
    ++$needs_desc{$node} if $filename =~ /^$pattern/;
}

for my $node (sort keys %needs_desc) {
    print "$node\n" if !$needs_desc{$node};
}
[download]

You really need to visit the Tutorials section and do a little reading about hashes in particular.

Note that I've fixed a number of errors and refactored some of the code somewhat, in large part to cut away cruft and make the solution to the actual problem clearer (I hope).