Kaseya 2022 IT Operations Report Stresses Importance of Automation

When it comes to IT operations, there is a clear need for more integration and automation, according to Kaseya's 2022 IT Operations Report.

Among the key findings in the report, which was released on July 12, is that 54% of organizations strongly support more integration efforts. Additionally, 48% of the 1,877 IT operations professionals who responded to the survey identified the need for more automation as a top priority.

"Automation is one of the biggest drivers to improve IT operations," Mike Puglia, chief customer marketing officer at Kaseya, told ITPro Today."Not only does automation improve efficiency and processes, it also helps with employee retention."

The amount of manual, repetitive tasks that techs are doing is burning them out and causing them to quit, Puglia said.

Challenges for IT Operations in 2022

There are multiple challenges that IT operations staffs are facing in 2022. The Kaseya report identified as the top three challenges:

Forty percent of respondents identified as a challenge the need to replace outdated and legacy systems. Outdated infrastructure is the biggest budget driver after business growth, with 40% of respondents looking to update their technology this year.

One challenge that didn't rank particularly high in the survey was the issue of remote work. Puglia said hewas surprised that so few businesses reported remote work as one of their challenges. The big movement in the past year has been moving back into the office, but some companies still have remote workers, even if it's just one person who moved away from the office during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

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"Over the past two years, we learned a lot about supporting remote employees, but there's still struggles to be worked through, like connectivity," Puglia said. "Getting back into the office has been exciting for so many companies that remote workers might be left to the side to fend for themselves more than ever before."

Top IT Operations Management Tools

The report also identified the top IT management tools used by ITOps teams.

It should come as no surprise that help desk and IT issue ticketing tools are the most widely used type of technology by ITOps. Forty-five percent of survey respondents highlighted the use of endpoint detection and response (EDR) security technology as an increasingly important tool that they use.

Also of note, IT operations professionals are increasingly using cloud cost management tools, with 24% of respondents identifying those as key tools for 2022, up from only 7% in 2021.

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