Technical professionals play an important and diverse role in today’s organizations. Responsible for performance, uptime, and availability, the role of IT pros has grown while budgets have remained the same and priorities have shifted from emerging tech to infrastructure. The recent SolarWinds® Universal Language of IT Report explores how these changes are impacting IT professionals and how technology is helping businesses evolve.
According to the report, respondents listed security and compliance, cloud computing, and hybrid IT as the top three technologies influencing organizations’ staffing needs. These technologies are blurring the lines between tech roles, and paired with limited budgets, IT workers are struggling to successfully support their organizations. Forty-three percent of respondents listed a lack of resources and 14% listed a lack of training as barriers to success. Over 38% of respondents said they believe tech pros entering the workforce today don’t have the skills to manage modern IT environments.
This sheds an interesting light on the varying responsibilities IT pros are taking on. For 74% of survey respondents, at least 10% of their day included IT security management. The respondents listed network security, backup and recovery, and security information and event management as the top three skills needed. But tech skills aren’t the only ones needed to be successful. The report found nontechnical skills—including project management, interpersonal communications, and people management—are critical in modern environments.
As cloud computing grows, IT roles will continue to evolve, and IT pros need to evolve too. “Especially now, when organizations worldwide are facing new challenges and uncertainty, we must take this reality seriously, focusing on skills development and readiness in key areas like security, cloud infrastructure, and application monitoring,” said Joe Kim, executive vice president of engineering and global CTO with SolarWinds. “While IT continues to be a main driver of business importance, tech pros have an opportunity to help reassure the business and focus on effectively communicating performance now and into the future.”
The report explores the technologies and trends impacting IT pros, the skills needed to embrace these new technologies, and what the future may hold for technology professionals. You can download the report here. Want to find out how your organization stacks up against others? Complete the Universal Language of IT Self-Assessment to find out.
