IT Professionals Day 2018: A World Powered by Tech Pros

Leon Adato
Learn more about SolarWinds

As our world grows increasingly complex, and digital transformation remains top of mind for businesses in every industry, technology professionals are working around the clock. Tech pros work tirelessly to solve any problem thrown their way, no matter the issue's size — from helping an individual send a large file, to patching critical enterprise vulnerabilities, to solving latency issues beyond the firewall, or fixing application performance problems, technology professionals are often the unsung heroes of modern business.

While we certainly appreciate IT pros year-round, there is often a lack of understanding by business leaders and end users as to just how critical their responsibilities are, and the complexities associated with their day-to-day roles. The problem is, the job is never done. In fact, tech professionals have so much on their plates that the 2018 SolarWinds IT Trends Report: The Intersection of Hype & Performance found that over half of all tech pros surveyed spend less than 25 percent of their time on proactive optimization of their environments. But, what if that wasn't the case? 

Make sure to thank a tech pro on September 18 to acknowledge the ways that they make your day-to-day life better

To celebrate IT Professionals Day 2018 (this year on September 18), SolarWinds commissioned its fourth annual survey to empower technology professionals with the freedom to think bigger than their day-to-day tasks. The SolarWinds IT Pro Day 2018: A World Powered by Tech Pros survey explores a "Tech PROactive" world where technology professionals have the time, resources, and ability to use their technology prowess to do absolutely anything — from improving their IT environments, to addressing global societal challenges, and even enhancing their personal lives (turns out, virtual reality can work magic at work and at home).

A comprehensive look at the findings show us a glimpse into technology professionals' biggest IT ambitions. In a world powered by technology professionals ...

End users are the top priority

■ Nearly 70% of tech pros surveyed respond to one-off user requests on a daily basis.

■ Over half (51%) of tech pros respond to help desk tickets on a daily basis.

■ Even when they have time to be proactive at work, researching new technologies that will benefit the end user is still the number one priority (by weighted rank).

AI, machine learning, deep learning, and cloud transform IT environments

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, deep learning, and cloud computing would not only transform IT environments, but the greater good, according to respondents.

■ The top three new technology advancements that tech pros would use to solve challenges within their IT environment, if they had more time, would be:

1. AI/machine learning/deep learning
2. Automation
3. Cloud (by weighted rank, respectively)

■ Technology professionals say they would use these technologies to:

1. Uncover more actionable insights for business leadership
2. Make repeatable tasks quicker and more accurate
3. Scale easily and cost effectively by using the public cloud

■ The top three technology advancements that tech pros would use to solve broader societal issues, if they had more time to do so, would be:

1. AI/machine learning/deep learning
2. Big data analysis
3. Cloud (by weighted rank, respectively)

■ Technology professionals say they would use these technologies to pursue two main societal challenges:

1. Affordable education, housing, and healthcare for all
2. Environmental and sustainability initiatives

Personal development is top of mind

Personal development is top of mind but requires a time commitment outside the traditional workday.

The top three work-related activities that tech pros would spend their time on if they had one extra hour in the workday:

■ Developing a skillset (41%)

■ Researching new technologies (21%)

■ Planning/strategizing future technology innovation in your IT environment (19%)

IT prowess would also power personal lives

The top three areas outside of work that tech pros would use technology to enhance (by weighted rank):

1. Home DIY projects: Such as using virtual reality (VR) to visualize a kitchen remodel before implementing changes.

2. Managing finances: By using machine learning (ML) to grow investments and diversify their portfolio.

3. Vacation planning: Such as utilizing cloud-based services to store and link travel data, and using IoT-based devices to generate real-time insights while on the go.

In our IT Professionals Day 2017 survey, Little-Known IT Pro Facts, it became clear that technology professionals are the backbone of our businesses. The 2018 survey shows that this trend has continued, and envisions technology pros' ambition to better the workplace, the world, and their personal lives through the use of technology.

Make sure to thank a tech pro on September 18, or any day, to acknowledge the ways that they make your day-to-day life better.

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IT Professionals Day 2018: A World Powered by Tech Pros

Leon Adato
Learn more about SolarWinds

As our world grows increasingly complex, and digital transformation remains top of mind for businesses in every industry, technology professionals are working around the clock. Tech pros work tirelessly to solve any problem thrown their way, no matter the issue's size — from helping an individual send a large file, to patching critical enterprise vulnerabilities, to solving latency issues beyond the firewall, or fixing application performance problems, technology professionals are often the unsung heroes of modern business.

While we certainly appreciate IT pros year-round, there is often a lack of understanding by business leaders and end users as to just how critical their responsibilities are, and the complexities associated with their day-to-day roles. The problem is, the job is never done. In fact, tech professionals have so much on their plates that the 2018 SolarWinds IT Trends Report: The Intersection of Hype & Performance found that over half of all tech pros surveyed spend less than 25 percent of their time on proactive optimization of their environments. But, what if that wasn't the case? 

Make sure to thank a tech pro on September 18 to acknowledge the ways that they make your day-to-day life better

To celebrate IT Professionals Day 2018 (this year on September 18), SolarWinds commissioned its fourth annual survey to empower technology professionals with the freedom to think bigger than their day-to-day tasks. The SolarWinds IT Pro Day 2018: A World Powered by Tech Pros survey explores a "Tech PROactive" world where technology professionals have the time, resources, and ability to use their technology prowess to do absolutely anything — from improving their IT environments, to addressing global societal challenges, and even enhancing their personal lives (turns out, virtual reality can work magic at work and at home).

A comprehensive look at the findings show us a glimpse into technology professionals' biggest IT ambitions. In a world powered by technology professionals ...

End users are the top priority

■ Nearly 70% of tech pros surveyed respond to one-off user requests on a daily basis.

■ Over half (51%) of tech pros respond to help desk tickets on a daily basis.

■ Even when they have time to be proactive at work, researching new technologies that will benefit the end user is still the number one priority (by weighted rank).

AI, machine learning, deep learning, and cloud transform IT environments

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, deep learning, and cloud computing would not only transform IT environments, but the greater good, according to respondents.

■ The top three new technology advancements that tech pros would use to solve challenges within their IT environment, if they had more time, would be:

1. AI/machine learning/deep learning
2. Automation
3. Cloud (by weighted rank, respectively)

■ Technology professionals say they would use these technologies to:

1. Uncover more actionable insights for business leadership
2. Make repeatable tasks quicker and more accurate
3. Scale easily and cost effectively by using the public cloud

■ The top three technology advancements that tech pros would use to solve broader societal issues, if they had more time to do so, would be:

1. AI/machine learning/deep learning
2. Big data analysis
3. Cloud (by weighted rank, respectively)

■ Technology professionals say they would use these technologies to pursue two main societal challenges:

1. Affordable education, housing, and healthcare for all
2. Environmental and sustainability initiatives

Personal development is top of mind

Personal development is top of mind but requires a time commitment outside the traditional workday.

The top three work-related activities that tech pros would spend their time on if they had one extra hour in the workday:

■ Developing a skillset (41%)

■ Researching new technologies (21%)

■ Planning/strategizing future technology innovation in your IT environment (19%)

IT prowess would also power personal lives

The top three areas outside of work that tech pros would use technology to enhance (by weighted rank):

1. Home DIY projects: Such as using virtual reality (VR) to visualize a kitchen remodel before implementing changes.

2. Managing finances: By using machine learning (ML) to grow investments and diversify their portfolio.

3. Vacation planning: Such as utilizing cloud-based services to store and link travel data, and using IoT-based devices to generate real-time insights while on the go.

In our IT Professionals Day 2017 survey, Little-Known IT Pro Facts, it became clear that technology professionals are the backbone of our businesses. The 2018 survey shows that this trend has continued, and envisions technology pros' ambition to better the workplace, the world, and their personal lives through the use of technology.

Make sure to thank a tech pro on September 18, or any day, to acknowledge the ways that they make your day-to-day life better.

Related Links

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Related Vendors

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Keys to Building a Partner Ecosystem That Scales

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

AI Deepfakes: Rethinking Trust in the Workplace

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

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For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

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Why Moving Off the Cloud Is the Easy Part and What Comes Next Is Where Things Get Hard

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

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In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...