In many companies, the digital transformation only accelerated rapidly with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, implementing solutions or developing new offerings was often not based on a long-term strategy. Instead, in many cases, it was external factors to which organizations had to react quickly.
As a result, the complexity of the IT landscape has increased massively in many places and poses significant challenges for technologists that will not decrease in the future. Fabian Gampfer, Sales Engineering Manager at AppDynamics, knows what managers should do so that their IT experts can get this complexity under control in good time and add sustainable added value to their work.
The economy in Germany is slowly recovering from the pandemic; most recently, the number of unemployed fell sharply in May. Nevertheless, the effects will be felt in many areas for a long time, and some changes will be permanent. This also includes the wave of digitization that has hit companies across Germany due to the lockdowns. Technologists, in particular, had to find and implement suitable solutions within a brief period that would keep the business going despite working from home or closed shops. This process did not always run smoothly and was stressed – in the current study Agents of Transformation 2021: The Rise of Full-Stack Observability of AppDynamics, nine out of ten German technologists (90 percent) said that they felt a lot of pressure while working. One of the main reasons for this: the increasing complexity of the IT landscape.
With More Complexity, There Are More Problems
Customers now expect flawless and intuitive digital experiences from companies – a grace period that existed at the beginning of the pandemic has long expired. They are not aware that many solutions had to be implemented almost overnight without thinking about how they would fit into the IT landscape of the organization. Technologists are grappling with the aftermath, and more than two-thirds (68 percent) believe their response to the pandemic has made IT more complex than ever. Above all, the abrupt transition to cloud computing and the resulting patchwork of legacy and cloud technologies contribute significantly to this complexity.
As a result, IT specialists are becoming increasingly difficult to quickly identify the causes of malfunctions and rectify them before they affect customers. 66 percent admit that they waste a lot of time because they cannot promptly narrow down where performance problems occur. Instead of thinking about the big picture and developing their company further, technologists are primarily concerned with extinguishing fires.
Transparency Ensures Faster Solutions And Well-Founded Decisions
At the same time, they cannot link IT performance to business goals, even though almost three-quarters of IT professionals (74 percent) are well aware that their technology-related decisions directly impact business performance. This means that they are not able to prioritize tasks according to their actual importance. Managers urgently need to meet this challenge and provide their technologists with suitable tools to gain real-time insights into the entire IT landscape and analyze the ever-increasing amounts of data. Thanks to this full-stack observability, problems within the IT environment can be resolved quickly – and technologists can concentrate on
However, the IT experts must also be ready to adapt themselves to these new circumstances. Anyone who has had to rely on their instinct for a long time may initially have difficulties combining it with a data-driven approach. 88 percent also recognize that collaboration with other colleagues inside and outside the IT department will play a more significant role in the future. Managers must also provide the right tools to support this transition and their employees.
Technologists Can Only Drive Innovations Forward With The Right Tools
The end of the COVID-19 pandemic finally seems to be near – but this does not apply to the digital transformation. It has picked up massively in many organizations over the past year, and one of the biggest challenges technologists currently face is maintaining that pace. However, IT pros are still too busy putting out fires. You lack the right tools to achieve transparency across the entire IT environment so that you can solve problems quickly and devote yourself to more significant tasks. Managers have to recognize this problem and provide appropriate solutions. With the resulting knowledge, you can finally jointly develop a proactive and sustainable strategy for the digital transformation of your company.
Also Read: Digitalization During Pandemic – This Is How The Sales Turned Out
