What keeps IT leaders up at night?

IT leaders are under enormous pressure to modernize their IT organizations to keep pace with innovation and their competition. Determining the right mix of technologies and methodologies to support an entire organization can be overwhelming – and can keep IT leaders up at night.

To gain a better understanding of what IT leaders are focused on when it comes to modernization Rocket Software conducted a survey of 275 U.S.-based IT directors and vice presidents in companies with more than 1,000 employees. Respondents were asked about their current IT stressors, their approach to modernizing their IT infrastructure, and how they plan to become more efficient and optimized in the years ahead.

The focus of IT leaders

Modernizing IT infrastructure, data, and applications is critical for an organization’s success. It helps reduce risk, increase efficiency, optimize resources, and improve both the customer and employee experience. It can be a stressful pursuit for IT leaders – but it doesn’t need to be. When asked what keeps them up at night, IT leaders noted the need to improve overall IT performance (60%), followed by data security (50%), process risk and compliance (46%), and the need to improve agility (41%).

Despite the pressure, IT leaders are clear on what they’re focused on. Sixty-five percent of respondents cited implementing a hybrid cloud strategy as a top priority. Other focus areas include data and content management (60%), DevOps (58%), infrastructure and application modernization (58%), automation (57%), and enterprise storage (35%).

Hybrid cloud solutions are proving to be the most impactful way to modernize an IT organization. An astounding 93% of respondents noted they strongly agree with the sentence, “I believe my organization needs to embrace a hybrid infrastructure model that spans from mainframe to cloud.”

A hybrid cloud approach allows technology professionals to leverage the best of both worlds. It allows organizations to reap the benefits of the highly secure mainframe and the analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities that the cloud offers.

The importance of efficiency, optimization, and risk reduction 

When asked how they measure success within their organizations, respondents noted increased efficiency (71%), optimized resources (67%), and reduced risk (63%).

Risk Management: Risk management is a critical focus for technology professionals. Nearly half of respondents (42%) noted that they think about IT risk daily (31%) and even multiple times a day (11%). 

When it comes to IT leaders’ organization’s risk management tools and processes, only 33% of respondents are extremely confident that they have the right technology and software in place to execute an effective approach to IT risk management and only 34% are extremely confident they have the right processes in place to execute an effective approach to IT risk management.

It’s more important than ever that IT leaders feel extremely confident with their approach to risk management – it protects an organization from potential liability and reputational damage.

Optimization: Optimizing resources is a critical focus for IT leaders, and automation is key to unlocking the potential of all resources within an organization. Unfortunately, many IT professionals are spending much of their time manually managing and analyzing data each week. Thirty percent of respondents said they spend 6-10 hours per week on manual data entry and analysis and an alarming 33% said they spend 11-15 hours per week on it. To mitigate this, automation can be leveraged for data entry and analysis to free up IT professionals to focus on more creative work that aligns with the organization’s overall business goals.

Efficiency: Particularly in a time of economic uncertainty, the pressure from organizational stakeholders to be more efficient is being felt by IT leaders across organizations, and they’re looking for processes and tools to help increase efficiency.

Sixty-two percent of respondents noted they have a much greater focus on efficiency today due to the economic landscape. Respondents ranked faster DevOps processes, automated processes, and increasing overall output as the top three measures that would be most impactful in increasing efficiency. Ranked lower on the list are fewer workflows and labor productivity. Finding the right processes for an IT leader’s organization is crucial.

More than ever, technology professionals have been tasked with increasing efficiency, optimizing their resources, and reducing potential risk throughout their organization. Finding the right tools, methodologies, and vendors to support those initiatives is critical for success. To read the full report, or to learn how Rocket Software can help IT leaders modernize without disruption, click here.