IT management software provider SolarWinds has published the results of its ninth annual IT Trends Report. SolarWinds’ ‘IT Trends Report 2022 – Getting IT Right: Managing Hybrid IT Complexity’ looks at the pace of digital transformation activities and their influence on IT departments. According to this survey, the rapid adoption of hybrid IT has increased network complexity for most enterprises, posing a number of troubling challenges for IT workers.
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The impact of scattered and complicated IT infrastructures has been increased by hybrid and remote work. It may be difficult to run workloads and applications across cloud and on-premises infrastructure, and many businesses are increasingly encountering – and ultimately being hampered by – these issues, according to the SolarWinds commissioned report.
As more mission-critical workloads migrate to connected cloud architectures that span public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, enterprises would recognize the need to invest in tools that will help them ensure consistent policies and performance across all platforms and end users, according to this report that was conducted by IDC. They do, however, encounter obstacles like as financial restrictions, time constraints, and impediments to applying observability as a strategy to stay up with hybrid IT reality.
According to the latest SolarWinds survey, in addition, IT professionals are less confident in their organization’s capacity to manage IT. While more than half of tech professionals (54%) say they use monitoring techniques to handle this complexity, 49% say they have no insight over the majority of their company’s applications and infrastructure. Their ability to undertake anomaly detection, quick root-cause analysis, and other important operations to assure the availability, performance, and security of business-critical systems is hampered by this lack of visibility.
“Operational complexity prevents organizations from capitalizing on their technology-driven transformation and investments and delivering benefits for end users,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President and CEO at SolarWinds. “As organizations look beyond the pandemic, they must re-examine their investments from the past few years. Part of that requires organizations to have visibility into their IT environments to understand what’s working and not working, and where to prioritize their efforts to achieve the ROI targeted in their planned projects.”
“Observability is increasingly becoming the clear answer for tech pros charged with managing greater levels of complexity in these diverse and distributed environments spanning on-premises, private and public clouds,” added Mr. Ramakrishna. “However, organizations must set aside time and resources to upskill and train tech pros to help them properly implement observability strategies and manage hybrid IT realities more effectively – and set up their teams and business for success in the long run.”
2022 IT Trends Key Findings
The ongoing expansion of hybrid IT is pushing up levels of IT management complexity, but tech experts are unsure how to best manage it.
Nearly half of tech pros respondents (49%) confirmed the acceleration of hybrid IT has increased the complexity of their organization’s IT management. These tech pros reported the following top drivers of increased complexity: Fragmentation between legacy technologies and new technologies (43%); Increased technology requirements from multiple departments (42%); New tools and/or technologies (38%); Maintenance of a legacy technology stack (38%).
Interestingly, 59% of small businesses surveyed indicated increased technology requirements from multiple departments were the leading cause for increased complexity, compared to 40% of their mid-size and 37% of their enterprise counterparts.
When asked how confidence they were in their organization’s capacity to manage IT complexity, tech pros responded: Only 8% of computer professionals indicated they were highly confident in their abilities. Moreover, a third of those polled (36%) confessed they weren’t entirely prepared to deal with complexity and only felt moderately confident; Only half of the tech pros polled (50 percent) believe their company is well-equipped to deal with IT complexity. A further 4% expressed no confidence at all.
When tech pros’ level of confidence is considered by business size, confidence levels increased among small business respondents: Nearly two-thirds of small business tech pros said they’re confident (52%) or extremely confident (12%) in managing IT complexity; Meanwhile, large enterprises experienced the lowest level of confidence, with only 47% of respondents saying they’re confident and 36% saying they’re somewhat confident.
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Visibility is a major source of concern for responders. Technology workers believe they have little insight into their networks, apps, and infrastructure as the migration to complex, hybrid IT systems accelerates.
- When questioned about their current IT monitoring and management practices, 49% said they only have visibility over half or less of their apps and infrastructure.
- According to the survey, 46 percent of small business and corporate tech professionals said their company gives insight into the majority of their apps and infrastructure, compared to only 38 percent of their mid-sized counterparts.
- The top three aspects lacking from respondents who felt their current IT monitoring/management strategies provide visibility into less than half of their apps and infrastructure strategy were anomaly detection (63 percent), easy root-cause analysis (60 percent), and the ability to gather metrics from disparate systems (57 percent).
Organizations’ lack of insight into their networks would impact Return on Investment (ROI).
Most respondents (54%) agreed return on investment (ROI) was impacted during an IT project they oversaw in the past 12 – 18 months due to increased hybrid IT complexity – Twenty-one percent of respondents said the IT project in question took an additional four to seven months or more to complete.; Twenty-eight percent said the project in question was extended by up to three months.
By business size, a larger percentage of small business tech pro respondents (19%) indicated a shorter delay of one to four weeks to achieve expected ROI when compared to their mid-size (6%) and enterprise counterparts (11%).
With financial and time restrictions approaching, overcoming IT complexity hurdles and boosting ROI will be challenging.
Respondents say the largest barriers to improving visibility and implementing observability as an IT strategy include: Time constraints (48%); Lack of resources (43%), Lack of budget (41%).
Over a quarter (28%) of all tech professional respondents reported they have no insight into their overall IT budget.
Interestingly, as business size increases, the percentage of tech respondents who viewed lack of budget as a barrier decreases – 52% of small business tech pros report budget as a barrier, as compared to 47% and 32% for their mid-size and enterprise counterparts.
As it relates to planned investment in IT management tools over the next 12 months: Half of tech pros (53%) responded their organization plans to invest less than 20% of the overall IT budget; Just one-fifth (19%) indicated their organization will invest 20% or more.
As business size increases, the percentage of tech pros stating their organization will invest less than 20% of their overall IT budget on IT management tools within the next 12 months decreases – The percentage of tech pros indicating their organization plans to invest 20% or more remains consistent across small, mid-size, and enterprise.
Despite the fact that more than half of respondents (54%) believe that using IT management tools is the best way to manage rising complexity, there is a planned lack of investment.
Three-quarters (75%) of tech pro respondents state their organization has prioritized adopting a hybrid IT strategy for their technology environment within the next three years.
The biggest areas of impact respondents expect to see if their organizations implemented these IT management tools would be: Improved security (53%); Heightened performance of apps (40%); Improved end-user/customer experience (35%); Faster response and repair times for errors and downtime (35%).
Other strategies respondents mentioned as important to help to meet complexity issues include: Training staff and upskilling (56%); Adopting IT monitoring/ management tools (54%); Investing in automation tools (38%); Outsourcing IT services (32%).
When asked to select the top ways their organization’s experience with IT management complexity has influenced future technology investments: 41% of tech pro respondents selected providing access to skills development training; An additional 33% selected new roles/hiring specialists and increasing/ramping up investments.
By business size, a larger percentage of small business tech pro respondents selected providing access to skills development training (50%) compared to their larger counterparts (40%) – Likewise, a larger percentage of enterprise tech pros indicated their organization is increasing/ramping up investments (45%) compared to their smaller counterparts (19%).
Executive Summary
IT management software provider SolarWinds has published the results of its ninth annual IT Trends Report.
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Rapid adoption of hybrid IT has increased network complexity for most enterprises, posing a number of troubling challenges for IT workers
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IT professionals are less confident in their organization’s capacity to manage IT
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Operational complexity prevents organizations from capitalizing on their technology-driven transformation and investments and delivering benefits for end users
The ongoing expansion of hybrid IT is pushing up levels of IT management complexity, but tech experts are unsure how to best manage it
-
Nearly half of tech pros confirmed that the acceleration has increased the complexity of their organization’s IT management
-
Top drivers of increased complexity
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Fragmentation between legacy technologies and new technologies
-
Increased technology requirements from multiple departments
-
New tools/technologies
-
Maintenance of a legacy technology stack
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Only half of the tech pros polled believe their company is well-equipped to deal with IT complexity.
-
Visibility is a major source of concern for responders
Organizations’ lack of insight into their networks would impact Return on Investment (ROI)
-
Most respondents (54%) agreed return on investment was impacted during an IT project they oversaw in the past 12-18 months due to increased hybrid IT complexity.
-
Twenty-one percent of respondents said the IT project in question took an additional four to seven months or more to complete, and another 28 percent said the project was extended by up to three months.
Over a quarter (28%) of all tech professional respondents reported they have no insight into their overall IT budget.
-
As business size increases, the percentage of tech respondents who view lack of budget as a barrier decreases
-
52% of small business tech pros report budget is a barrier, as compared to 47% and 32% for their mid-size and enterprise counterparts
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Half of tech pros plan to invest less than 20% of their IT budget on IT management tools, while the percentage who plan to spend 20% or more remains consistent across small, mid, and enterprise.
There is a planned lack of investment
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Three-quarters (75%) of tech pro respondents state their organization has prioritized adopting a hybrid IT strategy for their technology environment within the next three years.
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The biggest areas of impact respondents expect to see if their organizations implemented these IT management tools would be: Improved security, Heightened performance of apps, Improved end-user/customer experience, Faster response and repair times for errors and downtime.
