It won't come as a surprise to IT managers, but an alarming number of them describe their company's monitoring approach as "chaotic." According to a recent survey of over 500 global IT leaders, the challenges plaguing IT teams are significant, as they navigate everything from economic constraints, demands AI puts on their tech stack, and competing job priorities from senior leadership.

What Is the Problem?

The overwhelming majority of IT leaders (80%) say budget cuts are negatively impacting their company's cloud migration. At the same time, nearly the same amount (71%) say they expect to be working with a mix of both cloud and on-prem infrastructure — and all of them (100%) think it's best for business. It's clear that hybrid isn't going anywhere.

So what's the problem?

Almost half of IT leaders have only negative things to say about their company's current hybrid monitoring approach — contributing to that "chaotic" environment. And maybe most alarmingly, the majority (74%) of IT managers spend more than a full day each week responding to incidents. Giving IT teams that time back not only makes employees happier, but helps a businesses' bottom line. More on that later.

Where AI Fits In

We know artificial intelligence is absolutely everywhere these days — including on IT leaders' minds. Surprisingly, only 50% think that their organization's infrastructure is prepared to handle additional use of AI. Even worse: only 17% say their company's IT infrastructure completely supports business goals. This should be a wakeup call for the C-suite to listen to the concerns of their IT teams so they aren't hamstrung by tech capabilities when it comes time to implement AI tools.

They do have a wishlist, though. IT leaders mostly want AI to provide recommendations for actions they can take to solve incidents (taking a chunk out of that one day per week that they already spend responding), and ideally, recognize and resolve issues on its own. AIOps is heating up as an industry, so luckily for IT teams, this reality isn't far away.

The Big Picture: Helping IT Leaders Make an Impact

The IT teams I've worked with throughout my career have always been extremely impressive. They're committed to their work, steeped in the details, and they keep an eye on the bottom line and care deeply about how their work supports it. I was not surprised to see this is true of most IT leaders, too – 74% have ideas about how to solve business problems using their data, but no time to develop them.

These findings should alert company leadership that more needs to be done (cough cough, better tools!) to give IT leaders more job satisfaction, as 65% of them say they're happiest at work when they have interesting, innovative work to do. Freeing up their time is also imperative for the business: 40% have put off projects that increase user and customer satisfaction to focus on responding to incidents, and 35% say they put off increasing revenue. Talk about a missed opportunity.

All of this to say: heed the concerns of your IT people, and results — everything from job satisfaction to company performance — will follow.