How the Network Stole Christmas

Annual Ipswitch Survey Reveals that Holidays Continue to Create Stress for IT Professionals
Daniel Okine
Learn more about Progress

In its second annual “Happy Holidays?” survey, Ipswitch surveyed more than 200 IT professionals to gauge the impact of their job on the ability to enjoy the holiday season. Jump to infographic.

To the surprise of no one, IT pros, yet again, are getting scrooged by some of the most common network issues or “grinches”. Taking a deeper dive into the data reveals that:

Who’s Feeling Like “Bob Cratchit”?

49 percent of all respondents noted they are either on-call or working this holiday season, and nearly the same amount (48 percent) will be thinking about work even when they’re not in the office!

Remote Access is the Most Common Holiday Problem

During the holidays many companies allow their employees to forgo the office and work from home – sounds nice, right? Not for IT professionals! Survey respondents noted that more than half (57 percent) of users experience problems with network access. Other user and network issues include poor application performance and forgotten passwords (18 percent each).

Who’s Topping IT’s “Naughty List”?

When asked who would top the “IT naughty list” respondents said that executives (24 percent), fellow employees (20 percent) and vendors (12 percent) would receive coal in their stockings. Notably, nearly one third (32 percent) of all survey respondents believed all three groups of people should top the “network naughty list”.

Gadgets “Grinches”

Some of the gadgets topping our wish lists this year actually pose threats to our networks by draining wireless bandwidth and application performance. According to the IT pros polled, the gadgets identified as most likely to disrupt their IT network were smartphones (35 percent), wearable technology (26 percent), laptops (23 percent) and tablets (16 percent).

Thinking Ahead to a More Prosperous 2015

When asked what New Year’s resolutions were most important to them and would be most beneficial, solving network and IT problems faster tied with Increasing IT security measures, both at (43 percent). Tracking down and finding the organizations bandwidth hoarders was the third most popular response (14 percent).

So while many of us are doing last minute gift shopping and making New Year’s Eve plans, network managers and system administrators are once again hard at work keeping business networks up and running and making themselves available to solve your problems.

Daniel Okine is Director of Product Management at Ipswitch.

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How the Network Stole Christmas

Annual Ipswitch Survey Reveals that Holidays Continue to Create Stress for IT Professionals
Daniel Okine
Learn more about Progress

In its second annual “Happy Holidays?” survey, Ipswitch surveyed more than 200 IT professionals to gauge the impact of their job on the ability to enjoy the holiday season. Jump to infographic.

To the surprise of no one, IT pros, yet again, are getting scrooged by some of the most common network issues or “grinches”. Taking a deeper dive into the data reveals that:

Who’s Feeling Like “Bob Cratchit”?

49 percent of all respondents noted they are either on-call or working this holiday season, and nearly the same amount (48 percent) will be thinking about work even when they’re not in the office!

Remote Access is the Most Common Holiday Problem

During the holidays many companies allow their employees to forgo the office and work from home – sounds nice, right? Not for IT professionals! Survey respondents noted that more than half (57 percent) of users experience problems with network access. Other user and network issues include poor application performance and forgotten passwords (18 percent each).

Who’s Topping IT’s “Naughty List”?

When asked who would top the “IT naughty list” respondents said that executives (24 percent), fellow employees (20 percent) and vendors (12 percent) would receive coal in their stockings. Notably, nearly one third (32 percent) of all survey respondents believed all three groups of people should top the “network naughty list”.

Gadgets “Grinches”

Some of the gadgets topping our wish lists this year actually pose threats to our networks by draining wireless bandwidth and application performance. According to the IT pros polled, the gadgets identified as most likely to disrupt their IT network were smartphones (35 percent), wearable technology (26 percent), laptops (23 percent) and tablets (16 percent).

Thinking Ahead to a More Prosperous 2015

When asked what New Year’s resolutions were most important to them and would be most beneficial, solving network and IT problems faster tied with Increasing IT security measures, both at (43 percent). Tracking down and finding the organizations bandwidth hoarders was the third most popular response (14 percent).

So while many of us are doing last minute gift shopping and making New Year’s Eve plans, network managers and system administrators are once again hard at work keeping business networks up and running and making themselves available to solve your problems.

Daniel Okine is Director of Product Management at Ipswitch.

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Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

Empowering the Human Side of the Autonomous IT Age

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

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If your best engineers spend their days sorting tickets and resetting access, you are wasting talent. New global data shows that employees in the IT sector rank among the least motivated across industries. They're under a lot of pressure from many angles. Pressure to upskill and uncertainty around what agentic AI means for job security is creating anxiety. Meanwhile, these roles often function like an on-call job and require many repetitive tasks ...