Report: Hybrid IT acceleration leads to more complex networks

SolarWinds, a provider of simple, powerful, and secure IT management software, has released its ninth annual IT Trends Report. The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2022—Getting IT Right: Managing Hybrid IT Complexity, published this year, examines the acceleration of digital transformation efforts and their impact on IT departments.

According to the report, the rapid adoption of hybrid IT has increased network complexity for most organizations and created a number of troubling challenges for IT professionals.

According to the new SolarWinds report, IT professionals are also less confident in their organization’s ability to manage IT. While nearly half of tech pro respondents (42%) say they use monitoring strategies to manage this complexity, 58% have no visibility into the majority of their organization’s apps and infrastructure. This lack of visibility has an impact on their ability to detect anomalies, perform simple root-cause analysis, and perform other critical processes to ensure the availability, performance, and security of business-critical applications.

“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, 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 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.” 

What are the key findings of SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2022?

The continued expansion to hybrid IT is driving increased levels of IT management complexity, but tech pros feel a lack of confidence in how to best manage it.

• One in five (20%) responded 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: 
  • Inefficient change management processes (60%)
  • Outdated staff skillsets no longer aligned with new technologies (40%)
  • Increased technology requirements from multiple departments (40%) 
  • New tools and/or technologies (35%)
• Interestingly, 50% of small businesses indicated outdated staff skillsets no longer aligned with new technologies as the leading cause for increased complexity, compared to 22% of their mid-size and 57% of their enterprise counterparts. 
• When asked about how confident tech pros were in their organization’s ability to manage IT complexity: 
  • 24% of tech pro respondents said they felt extremely confident
  • More than a third of respondents (27%) admitted they weren’t fully equipped to manage complexity and felt only somewhat confident 
  • 36% of tech pro respondents were confident their organization is equipped to manage IT complexity adequately
  • 10% weren’t confident at all
• When tech pros’ level of confidence is considered by business size, confidence levels increased among enterprise respondents: 
  • Nearly six out of 10 (59%) small business tech pro respondents said they’re confident (50%) or extremely confident (9%) in managing IT complexity
  • However, large enterprises experienced the highest level of confidence, with 29% of respondents saying they’re confident and 37% saying they’re extremely confident.

Visit the SolarWinds IT Trends Index to learn more about the study’s results and further information on the data that has been divided up by region into charts, graphs, and features that can be shared on social media. Like prior IT Trends Reports, this year’s study includes an interactive element that allows website visitors to assess how they stack up against the findings.

The outcomes of this year’s Middle East report are based on responses from 102 Middle Eastern technology practitioners, managers, directors, and senior executives from small, mid-size, and large businesses in both the public and commercial sectors. The survey was conducted in March 2022. According to the SolarWinds IT Trends Index, all regions analyzed in 2022 had a combined total of 1,138 respondents. These regions included North America, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom.