IT Pros to Acquire New Skillsets and Improve Business Insight in Today's Complex Environment

Patrick Hubbard
Learn more about SolarWinds

To remain relevant to business' overall goals, today's IT professionals must adopt new skillsets and be prepared to help their companies make informed, strategic business decisions, according to the New IT Survey conducted by SolarWinds.

The New IT Survey found that despite the increased sophistication and complexity of corporate technology, Australian businesses still do not consider IT as a vital role in the critical business decision-making process – while almost every IT professional surveyed (99 percent) said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make critical business decisions, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely.

Furthermore, 96% of respondents said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice – with nearly half (44%) of those feeling completely confident in doing so – suggesting that businesses are underutilizing the IT department, only seeking their guidance when ‘disaster strikes’.

In addition, the survey revealed the technology and IT skillsets IT professionals must invest in today to effectively manage networks and systems, while still remaining relevant to the overall business. In particular, cloud computing was identified as the top IT skillset that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by information security and business analytics.

The days of IT's limited impact on business are long gone, replaced by the modern era of almost complete reliance on technology and the incredibly complex infrastructure it brings with it.

As a result, more businesses are now recognizing that IT holds an important key to success. Likewise, IT professionals can no longer operate within the bounds of their traditional role. Instead, IT professionals and businesses alike must create opportunities for IT to take on a leadership position within strategic business initiatives, rather than just seeking IT's counsel on a reactive basis.

Fielded in November 2013, the survey yielded responses from 109 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australia from public and private sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies.

Survey Findings

IT's role in strategic business decisions:

- 99% of respondents said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make informed, strategic business decisions in this area; however, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely

- 96% of survey-takers said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice, with 44% of those reporting that they are completely confident in doing so

- To feel more empowered to provide such advice, almost half of respondents said they need more training in their area(s) of responsibility, and nearly 44% said they need a better understanding of their company’s overall business

Demand for new skillsets:

- More than 50% of those surveyed said cloud computing and information security top the list of IT skillsets that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by business analytics

- Respondents said information security is the IT role that will need to adapt the most to evolving technology over the next three to five years

- Cloud computing ranked as the most important technology for businesses to invest in today to remain competitive for the next three to five years, followed closely by mobility, data analytics, virtualisation (server or desktop), self-service automation and BYOx, respectively

Other findings:

- Over half of all IT departments now manage virtualisation, mobility, compliance, cloud computing, BYOx, SDN/virtual networks, data analytics and self-service automation

- 47% of respondents said increasing complexity has greatly affected their responsibilities over the past three to five years, and an additional 42% said it has somewhat affected their role

About the survey: The survey was conducted from November 12-18, 2013, resulting in 109 survey responses from IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australian small, mid-size and enterprise companies. SolarWinds will be releasing additional survey data in the coming weeks on IT professionals in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil.

Patrick Hubbard is a Head Geek and Technical Product Marketing Manager at SolarWinds.

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IT Pros to Acquire New Skillsets and Improve Business Insight in Today's Complex Environment

Patrick Hubbard
Learn more about SolarWinds

To remain relevant to business' overall goals, today's IT professionals must adopt new skillsets and be prepared to help their companies make informed, strategic business decisions, according to the New IT Survey conducted by SolarWinds.

The New IT Survey found that despite the increased sophistication and complexity of corporate technology, Australian businesses still do not consider IT as a vital role in the critical business decision-making process – while almost every IT professional surveyed (99 percent) said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make critical business decisions, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely.

Furthermore, 96% of respondents said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice – with nearly half (44%) of those feeling completely confident in doing so – suggesting that businesses are underutilizing the IT department, only seeking their guidance when ‘disaster strikes’.

In addition, the survey revealed the technology and IT skillsets IT professionals must invest in today to effectively manage networks and systems, while still remaining relevant to the overall business. In particular, cloud computing was identified as the top IT skillset that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by information security and business analytics.

The days of IT's limited impact on business are long gone, replaced by the modern era of almost complete reliance on technology and the incredibly complex infrastructure it brings with it.

As a result, more businesses are now recognizing that IT holds an important key to success. Likewise, IT professionals can no longer operate within the bounds of their traditional role. Instead, IT professionals and businesses alike must create opportunities for IT to take on a leadership position within strategic business initiatives, rather than just seeking IT's counsel on a reactive basis.

Fielded in November 2013, the survey yielded responses from 109 IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australia from public and private sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies.

Survey Findings

IT's role in strategic business decisions:

- 99% of respondents said they are given the opportunity to provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make informed, strategic business decisions in this area; however, the majority (70%) only have the opportunity to do so occasionally or rarely

- 96% of survey-takers said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice, with 44% of those reporting that they are completely confident in doing so

- To feel more empowered to provide such advice, almost half of respondents said they need more training in their area(s) of responsibility, and nearly 44% said they need a better understanding of their company’s overall business

Demand for new skillsets:

- More than 50% of those surveyed said cloud computing and information security top the list of IT skillsets that will grow in demand over the next three to five years, followed by business analytics

- Respondents said information security is the IT role that will need to adapt the most to evolving technology over the next three to five years

- Cloud computing ranked as the most important technology for businesses to invest in today to remain competitive for the next three to five years, followed closely by mobility, data analytics, virtualisation (server or desktop), self-service automation and BYOx, respectively

Other findings:

- Over half of all IT departments now manage virtualisation, mobility, compliance, cloud computing, BYOx, SDN/virtual networks, data analytics and self-service automation

- 47% of respondents said increasing complexity has greatly affected their responsibilities over the past three to five years, and an additional 42% said it has somewhat affected their role

About the survey: The survey was conducted from November 12-18, 2013, resulting in 109 survey responses from IT practitioners, managers and directors in Australian small, mid-size and enterprise companies. SolarWinds will be releasing additional survey data in the coming weeks on IT professionals in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil.

Patrick Hubbard is a Head Geek and Technical Product Marketing Manager at SolarWinds.

Related Links

Hot Topics

Related Vendors

The Latest

Crisis Communications: When the Outage Hits, Your Communications Can't Be "Investigating"

Outages aren't new. What's new is how quickly they spread across systems, vendors, regions and customer workflows. The moment that performance degrades, expectations escalate fast. In today's always-on environment, an outage isn't just a technical event. It's a trust event ...

OpenTelemetry: A Complete Telemetry Framework that Grows with You

Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

The Quiet Power of Milliseconds in High Traffic Systems

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

Are AI "Autonomous Coworkers" Ready for Payroll?

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI Reaches Pivotal Inflection Point: From Automation to Agentic Intelligence

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The Real Reason Enterprise AI Stalls: It Doesn't Fit in the Box

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

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Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

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Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

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If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

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Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...