| Eighty-seven per cent
of mid-market IT staff forced to work nights, weekends and holidays
17 July, 2006
By Mark Cox
It's probably not the most shocking study ever done, but
new research from high-tech and enterprise computing market
research firm King Research that reveals IT professionals
are still forced to work outside of regular business hours
to execute routine IT tasks. Only 13 per cent of IT staff
in mid-size companies are able to avoid working evenings,
weekends and holidays, compared to 20 per cent at large companies
and 34 per cent at small companies.
"Corporate IT departments spend significant time and
resources managing their server and desktop computers. Many
of these tasks -- patch management, inventory, new machine
deployment, and many others -- can be time consuming and expensive,"
said Diane Hagglund of King Research.
In mid-market companies, automation efforts are underway
but have not yet been deployed to the full range of repetitive
automation-capable IT processes, including patch management,
software/hardware inventory, software distribution, security
enforcement, helpdesk ticket management and new machine deployment.
Nineteen per cent of participants in mid market space have
essentially no IT automation, and for any given IT task, only
half of the companies in this space automate the task.
The report found that while larger companies are automating
their routine IT processes at a much higher rate (82 per cent)
than companies in the mid- market space (54 per cent), only
29 per cent of smaller companies automate these kinds of tasks.
IT professionals using automation for IT processes reported
a preference for commercial tools over internally developed
tools and/or scripts. By far the greatest complaint regarding
automation tools had to do with their cost. Other concerns
included lack of management support to acquire and use them,
and having no time to evaluate or use available tools as common
challenges to using them.
King also researched IT server appliances -- the IT solution
that bundles software on server hardware from a single vendor.
Sixty-two per cent owned or planned to purchase an appliance,
and all respondents identified ease of maintenance and speed
of deployment as among the most compelling potential benefits
of using an IT appliance. Expectation of benefits was found
to be in line with actual benefits appliances delivered.
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