Customer-Facing Incidents Increasing

Enterprises are experiencing a 13% year-over-year increase in customer-facing incidents, reflecting rising levels of complexity and risk as businesses drive operational transformation at scale, according to the 2024 State of Digital Operations study from PagerDuty.

Enterprise companies saw sharper increases (16%) on a higher base of incidents versus mid-market companies (8%).

With mandates to achieve top line growth while improving efficiency in an uncertain macroeconomic landscape, the majority of leaders expect to expand IT Operations budgets with a focus on mitigating risk, increasing revenue and improving resilience. Cloud and security infrastructure remain top priorities given their foundational role in businesses' digital health.

The report found that 77% of leaders plan to expand investment in cloud services and 76% intend to increase spend on cloud storage. Almost half (45%) ranked security and reducing risk among their top three business imperatives, with 29% naming this the number one priority and 73% expecting to increase security budgets. More than half of respondents say their 2024 IT Operations budgets will be higher than they were last year, while just 16% expect budgets to decrease.

Despite a significant disconnect between business and technical leaders' outlook on adoption of innovation — 81% of technical decision makers report teams are using automation more effectively than they were 12 months ago versus 47% of business decision makers — they remain aligned on pushing forward to operationalize investments in artificial intelligence in 2024.

Across participants, 71% are growing budgets for AI and machine learning and 76% are pursuing automation of IT or business operations workflows. This accelerated rate of AI adoption has potential to both increase efficiency and add strain to already stretched IT infrastructure, underscoring the importance of foundational safeguards to manage unplanned incidents.

Leaders also indicated plans to operationalize investments in artificial intelligence in 2024, with 71% looking to grow budgets for AI and machine learning and 76% pursuing automation of IT or business operations workflows. The accelerated rate of generative AI adoption has potential to add strain to already stretched IT infrastructure, underscoring the importance of safeguards to manage unplanned incidents.

Methodology: The study was based on a survey of 350 business and technical leaders across numerous industries.

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Customer-Facing Incidents Increasing

Enterprises are experiencing a 13% year-over-year increase in customer-facing incidents, reflecting rising levels of complexity and risk as businesses drive operational transformation at scale, according to the 2024 State of Digital Operations study from PagerDuty.

Enterprise companies saw sharper increases (16%) on a higher base of incidents versus mid-market companies (8%).

With mandates to achieve top line growth while improving efficiency in an uncertain macroeconomic landscape, the majority of leaders expect to expand IT Operations budgets with a focus on mitigating risk, increasing revenue and improving resilience. Cloud and security infrastructure remain top priorities given their foundational role in businesses' digital health.

The report found that 77% of leaders plan to expand investment in cloud services and 76% intend to increase spend on cloud storage. Almost half (45%) ranked security and reducing risk among their top three business imperatives, with 29% naming this the number one priority and 73% expecting to increase security budgets. More than half of respondents say their 2024 IT Operations budgets will be higher than they were last year, while just 16% expect budgets to decrease.

Despite a significant disconnect between business and technical leaders' outlook on adoption of innovation — 81% of technical decision makers report teams are using automation more effectively than they were 12 months ago versus 47% of business decision makers — they remain aligned on pushing forward to operationalize investments in artificial intelligence in 2024.

Across participants, 71% are growing budgets for AI and machine learning and 76% are pursuing automation of IT or business operations workflows. This accelerated rate of AI adoption has potential to both increase efficiency and add strain to already stretched IT infrastructure, underscoring the importance of foundational safeguards to manage unplanned incidents.

Leaders also indicated plans to operationalize investments in artificial intelligence in 2024, with 71% looking to grow budgets for AI and machine learning and 76% pursuing automation of IT or business operations workflows. The accelerated rate of generative AI adoption has potential to add strain to already stretched IT infrastructure, underscoring the importance of safeguards to manage unplanned incidents.

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For years, cybersecurity was built around a simple assumption: protect the physical network and trust everything inside it. That model made sense when employees worked in offices, applications lived in data centers, and devices rarely left the building. Today's reality is fluid: people work from everywhere, applications run across multiple clouds, and AI-driven agents are beginning to act on behalf of users. But while the old perimeter dissolved, a new one quietly emerged ...

When AI Infrastructure Stops Behaving Like Infrastructure

For years, infrastructure teams have treated compute as a relatively stable input. Capacity was provisioned, costs were forecasted, and performance expectations were set based on the assumption that identical resources behaved identically. That mental model is starting to break down. AI infrastructure is no longer behaving like static cloud capacity. It is increasingly behaving like a market ...

Enterprise Resilience: Understanding the Shift from Static to Dynamic

Resilience can no longer be defined by how quickly an organization recovers from an incident or disruption. The effectiveness of any resilience strategy is dependent on its ability to anticipate change, operate under continuous stress, and adapt confidently amid uncertainty ...

Mobile Users Expect Perfection in 2026

Mobile users are less tolerant of app instability than ever before. According to a new report from Luciq, No Margin for Error: What Mobile Users Expect and What Mobile Leaders Must Deliver in 2026, even minor performance issues now result in immediate abandonment, lost purchases, and long-term brand impact ...

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