As organizations add more and more technology to their IT stack, a unified view of digital infrastructure is becoming more important, but harder to achieve, according to a new study from market research firm IDC.
The study, sponsored by IT management software provider Riverbed, found that nearly all of IT teams use observability tools, with customer satisfaction, operational efficiency and employee productivity the top three drivers of observability.
However, a large portion of organizations, 40%, use a combination of legacy systems and cloud infrastructure to support mission-critical workloads, making observability and control of a complex hybrid environment difficult to achieve.
According to the research, 54% of organizations are using six or more tools for IT monitoring and management, and 60% say current IT management tools are too narrowly focused and fail to provide a unified and complete view of the IT environment.
That could be hampering the productivity of IT teams, as 61% of survey respondents said specialized tools and siloed data views are limiting their ability to do their jobs, an issue compounded by the IT skills crisis, according to the report.
Respondents indicated that the need to unify observability across the IT environment is being driven by staff, security, cloud and resiliency. Specifically, productivity, cybersecurity, hybrid networks, hybrid work and the need to resolve problems faster are key drivers.
The observability issue is impacting IT teams in other ways, as having to spend on several different tools is driving up costs and preventing IT leaders from hiring and retaining skilled IT staff, as 56% of respondents say their organizations struggle to do so. Half of respondents say their observability budgets will rise in the next two years, and 30% say those budgets will increase by more than 25%.
Another 58% say the upper-level IT professionals are spending too much time on tactical responsibilities, and 63% say their lower-skilled IT staff should be able to handle some of those duties, per the study.
“In order to improve service integrity, staff productivity, and the end-to-end digital experience, organizations are taking a more concerted and proactive approach to managing and securing their digital infrastructures,” said Mark Leary, research director of network analytics and automation at IDC, in a statement. “Unified observability solutions, with their ability to leverage comprehensive and shared intelligence and deliver precise and actionable insights, benefit IT, end users, and the business.”
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