IT Pros to Acquire New Skillsets and Improve Business Insight in Today's Complex Environment

Patrick Hubbard
Learn more about SolarWinds

To remain relevant to business' overall goals, today's IT professionals must adopt new skillsets and be prepared to help their companies make informed, strategic business decisions, according to the New IT Survey conducted by SolarWinds.

The New IT Survey found that despite the increased sophistication and complexity of corporate technology, Australian businesses still do not consider IT as a vital role in the critical business decision-making process – while almost every IT professional surveyed (99 percent) said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make critical business decisions, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely.

Furthermore, 96% of respondents said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice – with nearly half (44%) of those feeling completely confident in doing so – suggesting that businesses are underutilizing the IT department, only seeking their guidance when ‘disaster strikes’.

In addition, the survey revealed the technology and IT skillsets IT professionals must invest in today to effectively manage networks and systems, while still remaining relevant to the overall business. In particular, cloud computing was identified as the top IT skillset that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by information security and business analytics.

The days of IT's limited impact on business are long gone, replaced by the modern era of almost complete reliance on technology and the incredibly complex infrastructure it brings with it.

As a result, more businesses are now recognizing that IT holds an important key to success. Likewise, IT professionals can no longer operate within the bounds of their traditional role. Instead, IT professionals and businesses alike must create opportunities for IT to take on a leadership position within strategic business initiatives, rather than just seeking IT's counsel on a reactive basis.

Fielded in November 2013, the survey yielded responses from 109 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australia from public and private sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies.

Survey Findings

IT's role in strategic business decisions:

- 99% of respondents said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make informed, strategic business decisions in this area; however, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely

- 96% of survey-takers said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice, with 44% of those reporting that they are completely confident in doing so

- To feel more empowered to provide such advice, almost half of respondents said they need more training in their area(s) of responsibility, and nearly 44% said they need a better understanding of their company’s overall business

Demand for new skillsets:

- More than 50% of those surveyed said cloud computing and information security top the list of IT skillsets that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by business analytics

- Respondents said information security is the IT role that will need to adapt the most to evolving technology over the next three to five years

- Cloud computing ranked as the most important technology for businesses to invest in today to remain competitive for the next three to five years, followed closely by mobility, data analytics, virtualisation (server or desktop), self-service automation and BYOx, respectively

Other findings:

- Over half of all IT departments now manage virtualisation, mobility, compliance, cloud computing, BYOx, SDN/virtual networks, data analytics and self-service automation

- 47% of respondents said increasing complexity has greatly affected their responsibilities over the past three to five years, and an additional 42% said it has somewhat affected their role

About the survey: The survey was conducted from November 12-18, 2013, resulting in 109 survey responses from IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australian small, mid-size and enterprise companies. SolarWinds will be releasing additional survey data in the coming weeks on IT professionals in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil.

Patrick Hubbard is a Head Geek and Technical Product Marketing Manager at SolarWinds.

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IT Pros to Acquire New Skillsets and Improve Business Insight in Today's Complex Environment

Patrick Hubbard
Learn more about SolarWinds

To remain relevant to business' overall goals, today's IT professionals must adopt new skillsets and be prepared to help their companies make informed, strategic business decisions, according to the New IT Survey conducted by SolarWinds.

The New IT Survey found that despite the increased sophistication and complexity of corporate technology, Australian businesses still do not consider IT as a vital role in the critical business decision-making process – while almost every IT professional surveyed (99 percent) said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make critical business decisions, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely.

Furthermore, 96% of respondents said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice – with nearly half (44%) of those feeling completely confident in doing so – suggesting that businesses are underutilizing the IT department, only seeking their guidance when ‘disaster strikes’.

In addition, the survey revealed the technology and IT skillsets IT professionals must invest in today to effectively manage networks and systems, while still remaining relevant to the overall business. In particular, cloud computing was identified as the top IT skillset that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by information security and business analytics.

The days of IT's limited impact on business are long gone, replaced by the modern era of almost complete reliance on technology and the incredibly complex infrastructure it brings with it.

As a result, more businesses are now recognizing that IT holds an important key to success. Likewise, IT professionals can no longer operate within the bounds of their traditional role. Instead, IT professionals and businesses alike must create opportunities for IT to take on a leadership position within strategic business initiatives, rather than just seeking IT's counsel on a reactive basis.

Fielded in November 2013, the survey yielded responses from 109 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australia from public and private sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies.

Survey Findings

IT's role in strategic business decisions:

- 99% of respondents said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make informed, strategic business decisions in this area; however, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely

- 96% of survey-takers said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice, with 44% of those reporting that they are completely confident in doing so

- To feel more empowered to provide such advice, almost half of respondents said they need more training in their area(s) of responsibility, and nearly 44% said they need a better understanding of their company’s overall business

Demand for new skillsets:

- More than 50% of those surveyed said cloud computing and information security top the list of IT skillsets that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by business analytics

- Respondents said information security is the IT role that will need to adapt the most to evolving technology over the next three to five years

- Cloud computing ranked as the most important technology for businesses to invest in today to remain competitive for the next three to five years, followed closely by mobility, data analytics, virtualisation (server or desktop), self-service automation and BYOx, respectively

Other findings:

- Over half of all IT departments now manage virtualisation, mobility, compliance, cloud computing, BYOx, SDN/virtual networks, data analytics and self-service automation

- 47% of respondents said increasing complexity has greatly affected their responsibilities over the past three to five years, and an additional 42% said it has somewhat affected their role

About the survey: The survey was conducted from November 12-18, 2013, resulting in 109 survey responses from IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australian small, mid-size and enterprise companies. SolarWinds will be releasing additional survey data in the coming weeks on IT professionals in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil.

Patrick Hubbard is a Head Geek and Technical Product Marketing Manager at SolarWinds.

Related Links

Hot Topics

Related Vendors

The Latest

The Corporate Network Is Fading - Here's What Replaces It

For decades, enterprise networks were designed around a simple assumption: work happened inside the office. Applications lived in centralized data centers, employees connected through internal infrastructure, and security focused on protecting the perimeter that surrounded everything ... But the way organizations operate today bears little resemblance to that environment. Cloud platforms host critical applications, employees connect from homes and airports as often as they do from offices, and partners collaborate through shared systems that exist far beyond corporate walls. In short, the corporate network no longer resembles the environment it was designed to protect ...

IT Leaders Must Establish a Network Data Architecture Practice

As an analyst who researches how IT organizations design, build, and operate their networks, I find that network data is a constant source of pain. Network teams struggle with data quality, fragmentation, authority, access, and trust. And these issues undermine everything they try to do. Here are the numbers: Only 45% of network teams are completely confident in the accuracy of their network source of truth, which documents the intent of their network ...

Data Center Outages Are Decreasing but More Costly

The 2026 Global Data Center Survey from Uptime Institute reveals an industry navigating workforce constraints, escalating outage expenses, even as rising costs remain the top concern for management teams ...

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The next observability gap may not be in the code. It may be under the rack. That sounds strange until you think about how AI incidents actually feel in the middle of an investigation ... The application dashboard may be accurate. It may also be stopping at the wrong boundary. AI systems depend on software, but they also depend on a dense physical stack: racks, power paths, thermal margin, maintenance activity and, in many environments, liquid cooling. Those physical dependencies can change slowly before they look like a software incident ...

TLS Certificate Expiration Is Becoming an Observability Problem

Certificate expiration is the rare outage you can see coming. Every TLS certificate carries the date it stops working, so the moment it will begin breaking connections is knowable in advance. That's what makes an expired certificate such a frustrating way to lose a service. What's changing now is how often that date comes around ...

Enterprise Cloud Observability: Choosing the Right Starting Point

Enterprises operate different combinations of workloads across cloud, hybrid and multicloud environments. For business-critical workloads, teams need to consider monitoring and observability early so they can detect health issues, investigate failures, and understand operational impact. Organizations place workloads on cloud platforms based on a combination of technical requirements, economics, existing dependencies, organizational standards, and business priorities. Their monitoring priorities therefore depend on what they operate and where those systems run. Those priorities will not look the same for every organization ...

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Top-performing businesses prioritize data-driven decision making, enabling leaders to move from intuition and gut feel towards evidence-based judgment. But that judgment is only sound when the data underpinning decisions is accurate. With incident management, data accuracy is particularly important. Long-term revenue, customer trust, and operational stability depend on high-quality data that enables teams to quickly identify and address the root cause of major incidents. Against this backdrop, governance becomes a critical endeavor to ensure the right data drives the right action ...

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Enterprise IT environments have never been more observable ... Yet many organizations still grapple with outages, lengthy incident resolution cycles, and increasing complexity. Most teams do not suffer from a shortage of data. They struggle to determine what deserves attention and what action to take next ... Enterprise IT operations must move beyond monitoring and visibility. The next stage of maturity is decision operations, an approach that helps teams make faster, better-informed decisions ...