Pandemic increases IT downtime

The study of 600 global IT leaders – 200 of which were in EMEA – reveals that previously siloed IT teams and technologies are converging as enterprises accelerate their modernisation efforts in reaction to COVID-19. The responsibilities of CIOs are expanding and the roles of traditional IT operations and administration teams (ITOps) are moving closer and closer to those of agile application developers and quality and security engineers (DevOps) as business priorities shift to align with the customer and their digital experience. 

• 78 percent of EMEA CIOs and CTOs feel that their input and importance within the boardroom has increased in the last 12 months (86 percent of CIOs/CTOs based in North America feel that way; 74 percent based in APAC)
• The vast majority of EMEA enterprises (93 percent) have seen some level of convergence between traditional IT operations and administration teams and development teams in the last 12 months 
• 91 percent of those respondents credit the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic with accelerating this convergence
• 28 percent of EMEA IT leaders believe that improved security will be the top benefit resulting from convergence between ITOps and DevOps; followed by greater ability to scale (15 percent); better cross-org collaboration/alignment (12 percent); better customer experience (12 percent); and increased ability to automate (12 percent)

“One of the key benefits of the convergence between ITOps and DevOps is that such a synergy makes it increasingly feasible to achieve true unified IT observability within modern enterprises,” said Daniela Streng, vice president and general manager, EMEA. “As our research shows, observability is all about gaining full visibility into the health, performance and availability of an organisation’s IT stack. Companies who achieve unified observability will find it far easier to complete their digital transformation initiatives and succeed in today’s digital economy, which is why LogicMonitor is focused on becoming the industry’s leading IT observability platform.”

Enterprises are prioritising data security, cloud and IT automation in today’s era of remote work

Many IT leaders are changing the way they invest in various IT initiatives as digital transformation accelerates due to COVID-19 and the rise of remote work.

• In 2020, 74 percent of EMEA IT leaders substantially increased their investments in data security; 68 percent substantially increased their investments in cloud technologies and services, and 65 percent substantially increased their investments in IT automation 
• 13 percent of EMEA enterprises say that expanding use of the cloud is their number one priority in 2021, followed by supporting remote work (12 percent) and modernisation/transitioning away from legacy tools (11 percent) 
• 73 percent of EMEA IT leaders plan to increase investment in cloud technologies and services in the next 12-24 months, followed by data security (71 percent) and IT automation (67 percent)

IT outages and brownouts remain widespread

One negative IT trend that businesses continue to experience at alarming rates – despite the severe negative business impact –  is IT downtime, which includes both brownouts and outages. EMEA IT leaders identify the increase in remote work, migration to the cloud, mobile computing and the Internet of Things as the top trends contributing to widespread downtime.

• In the past three years, 96 percent of EMEA IT leaders said their organisation had experienced an IT brownout; 94 percent said their organisation had experienced an outage 
• 50 percent of EMEA IT leaders said they had seen an increase in IT downtime as a result of the pandemic since March 2020
• 50 percent of respondents in EMEA saw an increase in downtime since the pandemic began, compared to 57 percent in North America and 48 percent in APAC
• 8 percent of EMEA IT leaders admit to experiencing 50 or more brownouts and 7 percent admit to experiencing 50 or more outages in the last three years
• Globally, enterprises experience an average of 15 IT outages every 3 years and 19 brownouts.
• Lost productivity tops the list as the most negative impact EMEA IT leaders have experienced as a result of IT brownouts (73 percent) and outages (65 percent), followed by lost revenue (41 percent for brownouts and 44 percent for outages) and damage to brand/reputation (34 percent for both brownouts and outages)
• 20 percent of EMEA IT leaders say their organisation was shut down permanently as a result of IT outages during the past three years

As the world continues the rapid pace of digital transformation—made even more imperative by the ongoing pandemic—organisations cannot afford to experience downtime. By embracing the technologies that provide them with full observability into their IT infrastructure, organisations can mitigate the risk of downtime and quickly resolve issues when they do occur.