Eighty-nine per cent of technology professionals say they’re feeling immense pressure at work, according to a new report from AppDynamics, part of Cisco, based on global research and interviews with board-level directors and CIOs, through to senior and mid-level IT management.
Now, they face the challenge to deliver even faster on new innovation programs to boost the recovery. It’s all getting to be too much.
“You look at the challenges technologists are now facing, from new priorities and challenges to technology sprawl with old and new cloud technologies, to multiple disconnected monitoring solutions, and you have a true crisis on your hands,” said AppDynamics Director, Erwan Paccard.
IT professionals say they’re feeling the pressure. Over 80 per cent of study participants said they have difficulty switching off and feel increased frustration about work.
Now, the ability to connect technology performance to business outcomes is critical. “Technologists facing this great gulf in front of them need not just a view of their entire technology stack but also a proper sense of context, of what truly matters to their business going forward,” said Paccard.
Download: Agents of Transformation Report 2021: The rise of full-stack observability
The power of full-stack observability in a business context
Three quarters of the IT professionals believe that their organization needs to connect full-stack observability to business outcomes within the next 12 months in order to remain competitive. They point to the need for a unified platform that provides monitoring across the entire architecture, including the network, security and technology they don’t control. As well, they say the system has to provide the business context on every data point to allow them to organize IT issues, alerts and incidents based on the impact to the users and business.
“Most technologists now are having trouble managing business complexity and are actively seeking to employ a unified solution to enable real-time visibility across their entire stack,” said Paccard. “What we at AppDynamics offer, is the ability to bind IT to business.”
Increasing complexity is raising stress levels
IT professionals in the study see “spiraling complexity” as a major source of their problems. Indeed, 83 per cent of them feel that their own job has become more complex over the last year. One reason for this is that many organizations fast-tracked their move toward cloud computing in 2020. As a result, technologists face the challenge of controlling systems both within and outside the traditional IT realm. IT workers say this has left them struggling to manage overwhelming “data noise” to identify root causes of performance issues, without the resources and support they need.
“These individuals have much more to do now – in less time,” said Paccard. “The timelines have shortened considerably. Many are finding they don’t have the necessary means to perform at the level now demanded in the new world of work.”
Issues can no longer be sorted out based on gut instinct, said the IT professionals. They see an urgent need for real-time visibility across the entire IT environment and their user and business impact. Ninety-five per cent of them said visibility is important to monitor the health of applications and services and their impact on user experience and business outcomes.
Companies are switching to a business-driven technology view, said Paccard. Working deep in the stack, professionals need to know what has the most significant impact on the business outcome. It’s no longer about doing everything – it’s about doing what matters most.
