A Kaseya report says that a third of IT professionals feel that they are not being given enough budget or resources to do the job.
The 2021 IT Operations Report surveyed nearly 1,000 IT professionals worldwide between April and May 2021 about their top priorities and challenges.
The survey found that 30 percent of respondents felt that there was not enough IT budget or resources to meet demands, making it one of the top three most significant challenges for IT professionals surveyed. Furthermore, 62 percent of participants stated that their IT budgets were cut, remained the same, or were unsure of what their budget would be in 2021.
Organisations across the globe have experienced crippling cyberattacks over the past year that have significantly impacted the global supply chain. Due to the growing number of threats, 61 percent of respondents said that improving security measures continues to be the dominant priority.
Cybersecurity solutions topped the list of what IT professionals plan to invest in for 2022, with 53 percent of respondents planning budgets for email security tools like phishing prevention and 33 percent of respondents investing in ransomware protection.
Cloud technologies were also top of mind this year, with 54 percent saying their IaaS cloud spending will increase and 36 percent anticipating growth in spending on SaaS applications. Cloud migration was also a high priority for respondents in 2021, which accounted for migrations across PaaS, IaaS and SaaS solutions. IT professionals also want to increase their productivity through automation, which ranked second in leading technologies for investment. Almost half of the respondents stated that they will allocate funds for this in 2021.
Cybersecurity and data protection is a significant challenge for 54 percent of IT professionals surveyed.
When it comes to data protection, misconceptions still linger. While 82 percent understand SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce need to be backed up, 60 percent of respondents stated that they believe SaaS providers are responsible for data protection. Typically, the SaaS customer is responsible for their application data backups to ensure recovery in the event of a cyberattack or user/admin error.
Time-saving automation and integrations between key software solutions are crucial for IT professionals’ continued productivity and success. Half of respondents rated automation of IT processes through their endpoint management solution as important, and 47 per cent rated the ability to run automation scripts through their IT documentation tool as critical to their success. Additionally, more than half of respondents stated that access to IT documentation through their service desk was crucial to their work.
Kaseya Chief Strategy Officer Mike Puglia said that the 2021 survey demonstrates that security was a top priority for IT professionals and will remain a major challenge as the surge in cyberattacks continues.
“Budget constraints are also a constant concern for internal IT teams. Kaseya’s workflow integrations and automation allow IT professionals to free up resources, enabling them to spend time on more impactful activities and better anticipate organisational needs.”
Click here to download the full 2021 IT Operations Report.
