to struggle with comprehensive or automated analysis, such as machine learning (ML) and AIOps.” At the same time, respondents with 10 or fewer tools saw significantly shorter MTTR (mean time to repair) than their peers with 11 or more tools, which dropped from an average of 13.7 hours down to an average of 5.7 hours – a nearly 60 percent reduction. Moving downstream toward employee users, corporate IT departments face similar challenges when it comes to shadow IT and the sprawl of SaaS applications being used. According to Auvik’s survey, nearly three in five organizations are using more than 50 SaaS applications, while two in five have more than 100 SaaS applications in use by employee teams. The larger the organization, the higher number of SaaS applications in use, while the smaller the organization, the more likely it is to have no idea how many SaaS applications are being used by its workforce. Across all respondents, nearly two-thirds of IT departments report limited to zero visibility into shadow IT application adoption, while a majority admit to little or zero visibility into account access login to all SaaS applications or the level of employees sharing accounts. In turn, a full 84 percent of companies surveyed by Jumpcloud are very or somewhat concerned about applications and resources managed outside of IT, while shadow IT specifically was listed among the top three security concerns. All the while, IT organizations report a myriad of reasons for why shadow IT looms so large, from a lack of visibility of the applications in use and a lack of SaaS or access management tools to business users moving too fast and inadequate communication with business partners. This all could be why “SaaS monitoring and management” topped the list when IT pros were surveyed by Auvik about planned investment during the next 12 months and presented with an assortment of choices, which also included “cloud monitoring and management,” “networking automation” and “SD-WAN.” Interestingly enough, the responsibility of monitoring and managing SaaS applications and the IT end user experience is “up for grabs,” Auvik researchers suggest. For a quarter of respondents, the responsibility lies with general IT, while about one in five say network operations and 18 percent say network security. All told, any of about six roles could be responsible for supporting end users, their workstations and SaaS applications. IT Wishlist Also instructive as to where outsourced partners fit into today’s networking realities is the wish lists of IT administrators. When Auvik asked IT pros what network-related task they would like to be doing but aren’t, researching new technology was at the top of list, named by 43 percent of respondents. The number one thing keeping IT professionals from this desired activity, not surprisingly, was a lack of time. Similarly, when Jumpcloud asked SME IT decision-makers to name the benefits of working with MSP partners, “they are up to date on the latest technology,” named by 55 percent of respondents, was second only to “they are cost-effective,” cited by 58 percent. The importance of such expertise, and the guidance it can afford, should not be underestimated. After all, the rollout of new solutions was the number two challenge cited by SME IT departments, behind only security. Certainly, the accelerated rate of innovation along with the growling complexity of business technology that IT departments face can be directly correlated to any challenges related to keeping up with and integrating new solutions. Also at play, no doubt, is the ongoing shortage of skilled IT professionals, which was named as a top challenge by half of the IT administrators surveyed by Auvik, just nudging out “budget/cost” for number one on the list. Taken together, these trends point to an increased reliance on competent sales representatives and the advice of a trusted partner. They are also why analyst firms such as McKinsey view channel partners among the contestants “well positioned to capture a higher share” of market growth in connectivity and other core business services. o CHANNEL MANAGEMENT Planned Investment During Next 12 Months SaaS monitoring & management 48% Wi-Fi management 46% Cloud monitoring & management 46% ITSM (IT service management) 44% Network hardware 39% Network automation 39% NPM (Network performance monitoring) 38% UEM (Unified endpoint management) 37% SD-WAN 28% DNS / DHCP / IPA 21% IPv6 16% Other <1% Source: Auvik IT Trends 2024 42 CHANNELVISION | JULY - AUGUST 2024
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