Skip to main content

4 IT Strategies for Success During the Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, top-tier enterprises were 2.6 times as likely to have grown revenue, 2.5 times as likely to have reached profit goals and 2.1 times as likely to have high employee satisfaction numbers, according to 2020 CIO Survey Report: Adjusting to Remote Work and the New Normal, a new Catchpoint survey of 200 enterprise CIOs and 200 enterprise work-from-home (WFH) managers.


Before COVID-19 hit, roughly one in three (33 percent) American enterprise employees worked from home at least some of the time. During the pandemic, this increased to three in four (74 percent).

In terms of engaging with customers, prior to the pandemic, less than half (43 percent) of customer engagements were face-to-face. During the pandemic, this dropped to just one in eight (13 percent).

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on most enterprises. The survey shows that the 3 biggest impacts on businesses were profitability, revenue growth and productivity. Within IT departments, the biggest impacts were security, app reliability and network availability.

"When it comes to today's Digital Workplace, reliable performance is critical for employee productivity and morale, and with a fast-increasing number of employees working from home, systems are more prone to reliability, availability and performance issues affecting remote workers," said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO at Catchpoint. "The ability to measure, visualize and proactively react to outages and slowdowns can deliver a 1st class digital employee experience."

Not every enterprise had the same experience and some did surprisingly well during the pandemic. To see the differences, the survey divided the responses into three tiers. Top tier are organizations that performed the best in terms of business and IT metrics and bottom tier performed the worst. Catchpoint then compared the top and bottom tiers to explore those differences and what the top tier was doing differently.

The survey found 4 keys to top-tier enterprises' impressive results:

1. Focus on Reliability

The top tier is fully committed to reliability. Nearly all (91 percent) of the top tier has implemented a formal site reliability engineering methodology (SRE). This compares to just 69% of bottom-tier organizations.

2. Focus on Work-from-Home Tech Stack

The top tier is committed to making Work-from-Home (WFH) employees as productive as possible. For example, the top tier is 33 percent more likely to train their employees on work-from-home technologies.

The top tier also does a better job of equipping their WFH employees — nearly 3X as likely to say their employees' collaboration tools are extremely effective.

3. General Networking Initiatives

Top-tier organizations are more engaged with cutting- edge initiatives that optimize remote work. For example, top-tier are 1.8 times as likely to be involved with robotic process automation.

4. Security Initiatives

Finally, top-tier organizations are also more engaged with cutting-edge security initiatives. Top-tier reported being 1.4 times as likely to be involved with better security management and working with software-defined perimeters.

Methodology: Catchpoint commissioned ReRez Research of Dallas, TX to conduct the survey. CIOs and managers came from enterprises with at least 1,000 employees and were geographically dispersed across the United States and comprised a wide range of industries. Enterprise managers surveyed worked from home during the crisis and used a computer for 50 percent or more of their day.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

4 IT Strategies for Success During the Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, top-tier enterprises were 2.6 times as likely to have grown revenue, 2.5 times as likely to have reached profit goals and 2.1 times as likely to have high employee satisfaction numbers, according to 2020 CIO Survey Report: Adjusting to Remote Work and the New Normal, a new Catchpoint survey of 200 enterprise CIOs and 200 enterprise work-from-home (WFH) managers.


Before COVID-19 hit, roughly one in three (33 percent) American enterprise employees worked from home at least some of the time. During the pandemic, this increased to three in four (74 percent).

In terms of engaging with customers, prior to the pandemic, less than half (43 percent) of customer engagements were face-to-face. During the pandemic, this dropped to just one in eight (13 percent).

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on most enterprises. The survey shows that the 3 biggest impacts on businesses were profitability, revenue growth and productivity. Within IT departments, the biggest impacts were security, app reliability and network availability.

"When it comes to today's Digital Workplace, reliable performance is critical for employee productivity and morale, and with a fast-increasing number of employees working from home, systems are more prone to reliability, availability and performance issues affecting remote workers," said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO at Catchpoint. "The ability to measure, visualize and proactively react to outages and slowdowns can deliver a 1st class digital employee experience."

Not every enterprise had the same experience and some did surprisingly well during the pandemic. To see the differences, the survey divided the responses into three tiers. Top tier are organizations that performed the best in terms of business and IT metrics and bottom tier performed the worst. Catchpoint then compared the top and bottom tiers to explore those differences and what the top tier was doing differently.

The survey found 4 keys to top-tier enterprises' impressive results:

1. Focus on Reliability

The top tier is fully committed to reliability. Nearly all (91 percent) of the top tier has implemented a formal site reliability engineering methodology (SRE). This compares to just 69% of bottom-tier organizations.

2. Focus on Work-from-Home Tech Stack

The top tier is committed to making Work-from-Home (WFH) employees as productive as possible. For example, the top tier is 33 percent more likely to train their employees on work-from-home technologies.

The top tier also does a better job of equipping their WFH employees — nearly 3X as likely to say their employees' collaboration tools are extremely effective.

3. General Networking Initiatives

Top-tier organizations are more engaged with cutting- edge initiatives that optimize remote work. For example, top-tier are 1.8 times as likely to be involved with robotic process automation.

4. Security Initiatives

Finally, top-tier organizations are also more engaged with cutting-edge security initiatives. Top-tier reported being 1.4 times as likely to be involved with better security management and working with software-defined perimeters.

Methodology: Catchpoint commissioned ReRez Research of Dallas, TX to conduct the survey. CIOs and managers came from enterprises with at least 1,000 employees and were geographically dispersed across the United States and comprised a wide range of industries. Enterprise managers surveyed worked from home during the crisis and used a computer for 50 percent or more of their day.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...