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COVID-19 Increases Demand for Digital Services and Puts Pressure On IT Professionals

Tobias Dunn-Krahn
xMatters

One byproduct of COVID-19-imposed stay-at-home mandates is an unprecedented reliance on digital services for everything from grocery shopping and food delivery to video conferencing and workflow automation. And it's impacting both consumers of those digital services and the IT operations professionals responsible for delivering them.

To get greater insight into how this mass migration from analog to virtual services is impacting users and IT teams, xMatters surveyed 300 consumers and 300 IT professionals, including DevOps teams, ITOps teams, site reliability engineers, and developers in companies of over 500 employees.

Seventy-five percent of the technology professionals said they have the right products and processes to support the increased adoption of digital services. But wait, 54% of consumers reported unsatisfactory experiences with digital services, ranging from poor application performance to a complete crash.

A staggering 90% of consumers are using digital services. It's no surprise that over 80% are using them more today than ever, but ITOps teams can't just wait for things to return to "normal." That's because more than 80% of consumers plan to continue using digital services at this rate even after the stay-at-home era has passed.

Just what technology teams need: more pressure.

Technology teams are working under extreme pressure professionally and personally. Many companies were already planning or in the early stages of their digital transformations, and COVID-19 mandates are causing that work to fast-forward.

Per the survey, accelerated digital transformation means ITOps is managing more data and learning new technologies (automation, orchestration, cloud). Due to the combination of these factors, 36% of IT pros say they want a better understanding of incident management and resolution best practices.

For IT teams the challenges don't stop there. Almost 80% of respondents say privacy and security is also an even greater focus due to the remote work environment.

All this sudden change is taking a human toll. Fifty percent of IT Operations professionals are working increased hours and are experiencing a diminished work-life balance. Another 38% are working the same number of hours, but their workdays are starting earlier, ending later, or are just different.

Tobias Dunn-Krahn is CTO of xMatters

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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COVID-19 Increases Demand for Digital Services and Puts Pressure On IT Professionals

Tobias Dunn-Krahn
xMatters

One byproduct of COVID-19-imposed stay-at-home mandates is an unprecedented reliance on digital services for everything from grocery shopping and food delivery to video conferencing and workflow automation. And it's impacting both consumers of those digital services and the IT operations professionals responsible for delivering them.

To get greater insight into how this mass migration from analog to virtual services is impacting users and IT teams, xMatters surveyed 300 consumers and 300 IT professionals, including DevOps teams, ITOps teams, site reliability engineers, and developers in companies of over 500 employees.

Seventy-five percent of the technology professionals said they have the right products and processes to support the increased adoption of digital services. But wait, 54% of consumers reported unsatisfactory experiences with digital services, ranging from poor application performance to a complete crash.

A staggering 90% of consumers are using digital services. It's no surprise that over 80% are using them more today than ever, but ITOps teams can't just wait for things to return to "normal." That's because more than 80% of consumers plan to continue using digital services at this rate even after the stay-at-home era has passed.

Just what technology teams need: more pressure.

Technology teams are working under extreme pressure professionally and personally. Many companies were already planning or in the early stages of their digital transformations, and COVID-19 mandates are causing that work to fast-forward.

Per the survey, accelerated digital transformation means ITOps is managing more data and learning new technologies (automation, orchestration, cloud). Due to the combination of these factors, 36% of IT pros say they want a better understanding of incident management and resolution best practices.

For IT teams the challenges don't stop there. Almost 80% of respondents say privacy and security is also an even greater focus due to the remote work environment.

All this sudden change is taking a human toll. Fifty percent of IT Operations professionals are working increased hours and are experiencing a diminished work-life balance. Another 38% are working the same number of hours, but their workdays are starting earlier, ending later, or are just different.

Tobias Dunn-Krahn is CTO of xMatters

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...