IT professionals everywhere are challenged by heavy workloads due to growing demands on IT infrastructure and a lack of skilled employees. Tech teams have struggled to fill an ongoing talent gap over the past decade, just as complexity has increased for remote network management and cloud-based SaaS applications.
More than half of global organizations experienced a tech skills shortage in 2023, according to Statista. In this demanding environment, automation is becoming more essential to deliver a seamless end-user experience while protecting data security.
Managed service providers (MSPs) and internal IT departments are deploying more automated systems to overcome resource constraints and contain tool sprawl, according to my company Auvik’s IT Trends 2024: Industry Report. The report found that 64% of internal IT departments spend up to half their working hours just resolving end-user requests, and 49% of IT executives cite the shortage of skilled IT professionals as their biggest obstacle.
Many IT teams are adopting new approaches to help drive productivity, most prominently tools leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning. Nearly all IT professionals use at least one AI or ML tool to do their jobs today, yet the productivity gains from AI are still being offset by too many manual processes. My company’s report also found that almost one-third of network and SaaS-related management tasks are still done manually, and 11% of IT professionals still perform network documentation tasks completely manually.
Another related concern involves a lack of visibility into instances of shadow IT — when employees download unauthorized applications and tools that can lead to security and compliance weaknesses. Automating some portion of that oversight for technicians can drive IT efficiencies while holding down risks for the larger organization.
Almost two-thirds of global tech leaders say that candidates for IT jobs just don’t have the right skills or experience that they need, according to MIT Technology Review Insights. More than half of poll respondents cited an overall shortage of qualified candidates, and nearly one-third said that candidates lacked the needed job credentials.
Not enough skilled workers are available to close this gap, so more IT departments are turning to network automation and MSPs to outsource core IT functions. One practical way to create more time in the day for the internal IT team involves taking a planned approach to network automation. The goal should be to enable IT to focus on improving the experience of end users who drive organizational growth. Automation helps free up system administrators to pursue more strategic initiatives such as hardening security, performing cloud migrations or expanding digital transformation efforts.
Another way to address the persistent talent shortage involves pursuing more creative HR practices for hiring and training to attract alternative IT staff. Some firms believe in dangling top salaries and benefits, along with desirable working conditions and other perks, to lure the best people from rival organizations and top colleges. Other organizations take a backfill approach by bringing in contract and temp workers on an as-needed basis to adjust the workforce based on changing business conditions.
Another hiring strategy involves the active recruitment of new staff from a pool of less traditionally qualified IT candidates. This can include hiring and training promising recent college graduates (and even undergrads) who lack computer science degrees but exhibit a deep curiosity and interest to learn on the job. Tech apprenticeships and educational partnerships provide another way to match nontraditional recruits to the right job positions and build a more diverse workforce. The U.S. Department of Labor funds a popular tech apprenticeship program managed by CompTIA, one of the IT industry’s top trade associations.
In addition to pursuing new hiring practices, organizations are automating network functions to improve IT operations and security, but also to quickly recover and minimize downtime in the case of a damaging network outage. Configuration backups are a good place to launch an automation program. Consistent and formalized backups of all configurations should be a standard part of any backup and disaster recovery strategy.
Besides making regular data backups, other standard operational practices can help keep networks secure, such as making routine configuration updates, OS upgrades and device backups. More broadly, network teams should implement several other key steps for strategic automation across the network.
The network infrastructure needs a dependable one-click rollback in case of system outages or device failures. This process includes regularly scheduled backups of all routers, switches and firewalls, both before and after any automated changes are made.
Automation platforms should be used to identify device configurations, find compliance violations and activate processes for remediation and notification.
The discovery and onboarding of all new devices should be automated to make sure they are included in the platform ecosystem for future backups and compliance checks.
Create a record of all software apps accessed by each new employee when they get hired. In this way, IT teams can streamline the offboarding process with an offboarding checklist when the employee leaves the company.
A comprehensive strategy is needed for upgrade automation to manage all network infrastructure devices, while regularly maintaining the platform’s capacity to handle ongoing upgrades and changing workflows.
The challenges that IT professionals face today are daunting, yet not insurmountable. Both IT teams and IT systems need to become more adaptive. Strategic network automation provides a powerful way to augment staff recruitment and development to help fill the staffing shortfall.
Strategic automation can help bring order to the complex chaos of device onboarding, network backups, compliance audits, system upgrades and change management. By making a steady effort to improve automation effectiveness in this way, IT pros can deliver a more dependable network infrastructure that remains resilient in the face of ever-changing IT trends and shifting business demands.
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