With Labor Day behind us, most people are (perhaps begrudgingly) soaking up the final days of summer… but what if your summer never really began? A recent survey from Ipswitch reveals that a majority of IT professionals really felt the heat this summer working to ensure that employees stayed connected, productive and in touch from any location.
“The summer months are a busy time for IT pros as employees expect continuous unfettered access to company networks while working from home or on vacation. A single organization can find itself with a significant bump in remote workers, all of whom may need support and assistance,” said Jeff Loeb, chief marketing officer at Ipswitch. “A unified network and server performance monitoring solution will help IT pros to solve network issues before they affect employees, wherever they are working.”
The report is based on a survey of 239 IT professionals in the United States. Key findings are featured in this slideshow.
IT Summers Busier than Ever
Click through for findings from a recent survey that looked at how IT pros spent their summer, conducted by Ipswitch.
Remote Workers
Remote workers create extra strain on IT professionals: One-third (33 percent) of respondents saw nearly half of their colleagues working remotely during the summer. Forty-two percent cited malfunctioning laptops as the top culprit for networking issues, followed by network connectivity issues (32 percent) and poor application performance (16 percent).
BYOD Headaches
An uptick in wireless devices creates seasonal BYOD headaches for IT: An expansion of a remote workforce can lead to an influx of personal wireless devices attaching to the network to perform tasks, such as checking email. When asked what type of device they’d like to see eliminated from use on the corporate network, 49 percent of all IT pros surveyed chose tablets, followed by smartphones at 31 percent.
Appreciation and Empowerment
Appreciation and empowerment go a long way: When asked what employees could do to show their appreciation, the top answer from IT pros (42 percent) was eliminating the shadow IT effect when employees download apps without telling or seeking permission. Nearly one-third (29 percent) said they’d most appreciate if an employee reboots their computer before seeking assistance.
In order to feel more empowered at work, 32 percent of IT professionals would like the ability to choose and buy technology, while 25 percent wanted to have X-ray vision to figure out the source of problems. It’s clear that the little things make the biggest difference for IT professionals.
Vacations
Vacation time for IT professionals comes with baggage: One-quarter of all respondents (25 percent) indicated that vacation time was more restricted for IT than other departments within their organization. Even when taking vacation, more than one-quarter of all respondents (28 percent) admitted that they will be stressed over the state of their network while they are away.
Monitoring
Unified network and server performance monitoring can lower the temperature: The truth is that the problems IT pros face can be more easily identified and solved when they have a unified view into their networks, applications and servers. It’s more important than ever to have a clear view of what’s happening on your network – including traffic, trends and potential issues – before they become a crisis.
