More than 80% of organizations have experienced a significant increase in pressure on digital services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study conducted by PagerDuty.

These same companies cited a 47% increase in the number of daily incidents, resulting in 62% of IT and DevOps practitioners spending more than 10 extra hours per week resolving incidents, compared to six months ago.

The study also shows that 40% of organizations expect this digital pressure to get worse in the next six to 12 months.

"The pandemic has irreversibly changed the way we live, work, communicate, learn and shop. We now exist in a digital default world and the stakes are high. Downtime can mean millions in lost revenue and keeping digital services running perfectly is a complex job," said Rachel Obstler, VP of Product at PagerDuty.

"This research underscores the fact that every company is facing the challenge of accelerating their digital transformation to keep pace with customer expectations and needs, while grappling with increased digital complexity and strain. It also candidly points to the human cost of this dramatic change — an immense strain on the practitioners charged with keeping digital services running which can lead to massive burnout."

Since the pandemic began, 55% of respondents said they are asked to resolve incidents during their personal time five or more times a week, and 39% say they are firefighting or focused on unplanned work 100% of the time, which leaves no room for proactive, innovative work. As a result, organizations have had to cancel or delay an average of 7.6 projects in the last 3-6 months.

Other survey highlights include:

■ The top reason respondents stay at their jobs is because of the teams and the camaraderie in DevOps/IT (71%).

■ 58% said they are grateful for the opportunity to play an integral role in the digital economy.

■ 53% of survey respondents said the pressure to keep digital services running perfectly has reached unprecedented levels in the last 3-6 months.

■ 46% of practitioners feel overwhelmed when thinking about the next 12 months and feel the volume of work in the future will be significant.

■ 79% of DevOps and IT practitioners believe digital acceleration has to be their company's number one priority in 2021.

■ 51% cite intelligent data and insights that help prioritize where to spend time are critical.

■ 64% believe automation that removes manual processes will be critical to do more with less and meet increased demand on digital services.

■ 69% believe smart integrations are critical to doing their job better.

"As organizations strive to capitalize on the new norm of digital first, they must modernize and automate how they manage their digital operations, because the old approach doesn’t work anymore. You need AI and machine learning, and automation, in order to remove complexity and be proactive and predictive," Obstler continued. "Any company that fails to mature their approach, compromises customer experience, employee health, critical projects and risks significantly impacting cost structure."

Methodology: The global survey involved more than 700 DevOps and IT practitioners across North America, EMEA and APJ.