Hybrid and remote work environments have been growing significantly in the past few years. As individuals move away from traditional office settings in today's new remote and hybrid environments, many operational issues such as poor visibility into asset status and refreshes, unaccounted assets, and overspending on software are becoming a bigger challenge for IT departments. Due to the fact that individuals are utilizing their own devices, such as mobile phones, the attack surface has expanded as a result of the rise in popularity of remote work. With this happening throughout organizations, conventional IT asset discovery, lifecycle management, and security controls are challenged.
Oomnitza's Managing Enterprise Technology Blindspots survey examines how enterprises are managing their technology, what operational issues they are facing, and how the business is impacted by those. The report found that solely relying on siloed and diverse systems to manage different technologies, from endpoints and applications to network and cloud infrastructure, does not provide the integrated visibility, lifecycle control, or automation necessary to optimize resources and manage risk.
In fact, nearly 76% of businesses use multiple technologies to monitor business services, while at the same time, 71% anticipate more security breaches and increased operating expenditures.
Business Impacts of Siloed Systems
It is not uncommon for organizations to have a decentralized management system for different technologies and IT functions. However, as technologies evolve, so must IT departments by changing or adding to how they manage their technology systems to reduce the risk of security breaches and associated costs. Just under half (45%) of IT departments' wasted spend is on software and cloud services.
When digital enterprises consolidate technology assets from siloed systems into a single integrated view, it allows for optimization of technology spending, automation of governance processes to meet compliance and auditing requirements, and visibility of security risks. In this context, 43% of wasted time is spent tracking down technology assets, 32% have experienced slow onboarding, and 23% of enterprises highlighted compliance audit fines as one of the major burdens they face. With a disjointed technology management strategy, leaders are experiencing a significant financial impact on business operations.
Problems with Current Technology Management Recognized
Along with focusing on the management of technology assets, visibility, and operational blind spots, over half of the IT leaders surveyed (57%) are seeking unified and simplified technology visibility and a single source of truth. Having the ability to gain a holistic view of all assets through one reliable source is important to securing endpoints and gaining detailed information about the lifecycle of a device.
Often, IT staff do not have the systems in place to monitor employees' interactions with systems, the location of specific assets, and other key details in one centralized location. As a result, organizations are at a severe disadvantage, not only losing money on assets but also losing their competitive edge.
Additionally, lack of visibility, automation, and other limitations within today's current enterprise technology management landscape are recognized in the survey. More than half of respondents (52%) in the industry have plans to progress from conventional asset management to more modern approaches, and 11% of respondents already have projects underway.
Enhancing the Future of IT
Moving forward, traditional, disjointed, and unaligned systems will not be adequate for the leaders of the future.
Existing legacy IT Asset Management (ITAM) systems were designed for a vastly different working environment than the ones that exist currently. When IT can provide a single, integrated, and real-time source of truth across all technology assets, the benefits associated with it help the user and enterprise achieve measurable results. All of these factors result in improved business results, for example, cost reduction, risk mitigation, enhanced visibility, and increased productivity.