Grazed from SolarWinds
The IT Trends Report 2018: The Intersection of Hype and Performance, the company's annual report on IT trends, explores the spectrum of today's existing and emerging technologies, and the extent to which they are disrupting IT and optimizing the performance of environments as organizations progress in their digital transformation journeys. Overall, North American IT professionals are prioritizing investments in cloud computing and hybrid IT more than any other technology; 94 percent of respondents indicate that cloud/hybrid IT are one of the top five most important technologies to their organization's IT strategy today. By contrast, just two years ago, over one-third of IT professionals indicated, as part of the SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2016: The Hybrid IT Evolution, that cloud computing was somewhat important or not important at all. While AI and machine learning (ML) are not currently the highest priorities for IT professionals, optimizing cloud/hybrid IT environments creates a critical pathway to eventually deploy and capture the compelling benefits of these emerging technologies. However, the rapid adoption of new technologies has created environments that are not optimized for peak performance. Nearly half (47 percent) of the survey respondents indicate their environments are not optimized and reported spending 50 percent or more of their time reactively maintaining and troubleshooting. In increasing numbers, IT professionals appear to be addressing the challenges introduced by the cloud and hybrid IT through investment in containers: 44 percent of respondents ranked containers as one of the most important technology priorities today, a significant jump in adoption when compared to the SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2017: Portrait of a Hybrid IT Organization, in which just 15 percent of IT professionals planned to develop containerization skills in the year ahead. At the same time, IT professional respondents also cite inadequate organizational strategy (43 percent) and training (42 percent) as common barriers to system optimization. Ultimately, to keep pace with changing environments and achieve successful digital transformation, today's IT professionals require new skill sets and deeper strategic collaboration with business leaders. "The narrative in today's IT industry revolves around transformative technologies like AI, machine learning, blockchain, and more. These technologies are unquestionably important, but the results of this year's study reveal that IT professionals are still prioritizing investments in technologies that help run day-to-day operations, and choosing initiatives that deliver more immediate value," said Joe Kim, executive vice president and global chief technology officer, SolarWinds. "The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2018 shows IT professionals are focusing in on proven technologies that deliver value today, like cloud and containers, with an eye toward AI for tomorrow." "This is how most IT professionals currently are optimizing their environments to help unlock additional performance for their organizations," he added. 2018 Key Findings The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2018: The Intersection of Hype and Performance explores IT professionals' view about what is happening in their technology worlds, and how their organizations are prioritizing existing and emerging technologies. Key findings show that: Cloud computing and hybrid IT will remain IT professionals' top priority for the next five years, as these elements meet today's business needs while serving as the backbone to trends like ML and AI.
At the same time, IT professionals are prioritizing internal investments in containers as a proven solution to the challenges of cloud computing and hybrid IT and a key enabler of innovation.
The results of the IT Trends Survey suggest a dissonance between the views of IT professionals and their senior managers on priorities for IT investment over the next three to five years.
While IT professionals continue prioritizing cloud computing and hybrid IT, adoption of these technologies has made it challenging to optimize performance of their systems and applications.
Many IT professionals cite a lack of organizational strategy and inadequate investment in areas such as user training as the most common barriers to system optimization.
To explore and interact with all of the 2018 findings, please visit the SolarWinds IT Trends Index, a dynamic web experience that presents the study's findings by region, including charts, graphs, socially shareable elements, and additional insights into the data. The findings of this year's North American report are based on a survey fielded in December 2017, which yielded responses from 234 IT practitioners, managers, and directors in the United States and Canada from public-and private-sector small, mid-size, and enterprise companies. All regions studied in 2018, as reported on the SolarWinds IT Trends Index, were North America, Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, with 803 respondents across all geographies combined.
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