Keeping up with technology feels like a never-ending race. As tools and strategies evolve at warp speed across sectors, IT teams face constant pressure to keep infrastructure secured, stable, and supporting business goals. But upgrading for upgrading’s sake quickly gets expensive and distracting. Which innovations are really worth the investment? What’s mostly hype?
That’s why sound research and insights are so invaluable for setting priorities. Auvik’s IT Trends 2024: Industry Report presents the most useful stats, priorities, and developments that technology leaders need to know for the coming year, as well as comparing with year over year data from last year’s report.
Based on a survey of IT professionals across roles, industries and company sizes, the report findings spotlight key focus areas to inform planning. Whether clarifying misleading assumptions or highlighting unexpected pain points, the data provides an essential compass for the obstacles and opportunities ahead in modern IT.
High-level IT trends
The 2024 IT Trends Report reveals three high-level findings that paint a picture of where IT teams are currently at, along with some of the main opportunities and challenges ahead.
Automation is essential amid ongoing challenges
Between talent shortages, budget restrictions, and an overwhelming number of tools to manage, IT teams have faced no shortage of persistent obstacles. This year’s data continues to reflect these issues. But amid the ongoing strains, automation has emerged as a lifeline—a way to streamline overloaded responsibilities and deliver better stability where staffing suffers.
Whether an internal team is juggling company needs or a managed service provider is scrambling to meet client demands, targeted automation provides much-needed relief. It can handle monotonous, repetitive tasks that drain IT staff’s capacity, freeing them to focus on core activities. As workloads pile higher than current headcounts can reliably manage, intelligent automation may no longer be a nice-to have but a necessity just to meet baseline expectations.
Significant perception vs. practice discrepancies
In analyzing the survey responses, gaps also surfaced between leadership confidence and realities behind the desk. Executives frequently registered much higher assurance in their network tools’ effectiveness and the regularity of crucial tasks like configuration changes.
However, IT technicians actively responsible for these day-to-day needs reported substantially lower confidence and completion rates. This data presents some hard questions around just how aligned perceptions are across hierarchies.
While every organization has some degree of challenges in translating strategy into tactical implementation, these specific data discrepancies should sound an alarm. They indicate potential morale issues building where staff feel overwhelmed by unrealistic expectations. But even more critically, fundamental cybersecurity practices around network changes risk falling behind if leadership mistakenly believes one reality while IT professionals live another.
Investment in IT continues to rise
On a more positive note, the data reveals that organizations clearly recognize IT’s indispensable value, with investment and budgets rising almost universally. After last year’s pressing financial constraints, the funding picture looks brighter. However, an interesting shift also emerged. While more dollars flow in, staffing shortages now outweigh budgets as the top obstacle by a wide margin.
In other words, even with more capital to leverage, IT departments struggle to add critical headcount due to the talent shortage. This leaves leadership in a tricky balancing act, needing to maximize impact from their people while also providing the tools and technology required in modernization efforts.
Top 10 IT statistics and trends for 2024
Here are the top 10 most important IT trends that every technology professional should know going into 2024.
1. 44% of IT pros leverage 10+ network tools (20+ in government)
The data reveals astonishing tool overload, with 44% of IT professionals juggling at least 10 network tools. Government IT runs even higher, at 20+ tools. This kind of tool sprawl actively impedes operations and causes complicated context switching. It’s also particularly alarming since there are platforms, like Auvik, designed to consolidate network management and help teams run more efficient operations.
Leveraging comprehensive automation would allow for streamlining that could both simplify oversight and free up bandwidth for innovation.
2. C-suite execs are nearly 2x as confident as IT technicians in the effectiveness of their network tools to support remote work
When evaluating the preparedness of network tools to support remote and hybrid workers, a striking gap emerges between the C-suite and on-the-ground technicians. Our data showed 58% of executives strongly agree that their organization’s network toolset can effectively meet the needs of a dispersed workforce. But only 35% of IT technicians share this high degree of confidence.
With 90% of respondents supporting at least some remote employees, this disconnect risks operational gaps and/or employee tensions if leadership makes decisions based on assumed capabilities that do not match reality.
3. C-suite execs are nearly 4x more likely to report making daily configuration changes compared to technicians
A significant gap emerges in the data around daily configuration changes to networks. For C-suite executives, 30% claim their company makes these infrastructure adjustments daily, while just 8% of frontline technicians say the same.
Executives are also more likely to report daily config backups (36%) than technicians (20%). Considering that technicians interact directly with networks in deploying changes, this discrepancy raises questions. Either leadership lacks awareness around actual change cadence, or technicians face too many obstacles to fulfill expected procedures.
Both of these numbers indicate a need to align perceptions between management and practitioners regarding fundamental operational tasks like configuration changes.
4. Only 1/2 of respondents indicated their company is engaged in network planning
In a metric that signals potential issues with security, innovation, and resilience, half of IT professionals report that their organization isn’t engaged in network planning activities whatsoever. Consider that network planning includes critical initiatives like scheduling hardware patches and replacements to eliminate vulnerabilities.
It also involves mapping out technical upgrades to support emerging capabilities that could benefit the business. Whether due to legacy mindsets or operational overload, the lack of planning hints at a reactive culture that fails to prioritize proactive enhancement. With so much complexity in today’s networks, crossing fingers instead of planning practically sets up major availability, agility, and compliance risks.
5. 16% spend 20+ hours on end-user requests
Resolving ongoing end-user requests and technical issues represents an enormous time drain for IT teams. The data reveals that 16% of respondents devote over 20 hours every week to fielding these reactive support activities, while a further 64% spend between 10 and 20 hours.
For context, the majority of IT professionals report working between 31 to 40 hours per week, which signals that responding to tickets eats up a massive chunk of time for most. Government IT teams feel this most acutely, with 47% confirming they allocate more than 20 weekly hours to user requests. This leaves little room for forward-looking strategic initiatives to streamline processes and boost operational efficiency through methods like automation.
6. 1 in 4 list shadow IT visibility as a 2024 priority
Highlighting the security risks of shadow IT, the report shows that one in four respondents ranked shadow IT visibility as a top 2024 priority. With SaaS adoption exploding across organizations, the threat of employees signing up for unauthorized cloud apps without IT oversight creates massive vulnerabilities from data leakage, noncompliance, and other dangers.
The report underscores this, noting that 52% only have limited visibility into shadow IT application adoption presently. Similarly, 28% said general SaaS management will be a high 2024 priority as well, likely given how prevalent cloud apps have become.
7. 43% want to research new technology but lack the time
Asked which aspirational network-related activities they want to do but aren’t currently, the number one response was researching new technologies. These respondents cite lack of time as the main factor, which aligns with other responses around overwhelmingly heavy hours handling user requests and other reactive work.
With just 50% engaging in network planning, IT professionals lack opportunities to learn about emergent technological capabilities, tools, and approaches that could drive operational gains. Significant interest also surfaced in expanding security (41%), programming and automation (39%), and general training (37%). But again, persistent tactical demands obstruct any efforts to upskill or pursue knowledge advancements.
8. Staffing displaces 2023’s budget as the top challenge
The talent shortage emerged as IT’s foremost pain point in 2024, dethroning last year’s leading budget challenge. Despite 86% of respondents reporting increased funding, retaining and hiring qualified staff proved an even bigger obstacle across sectors.
In fact, 49% cited the shortage of skilled professionals as today’s leading hindrance, with mid-sized firms of 500 to 5000 employees feeling this most acutely at 56%. Even rising budgets cannot fully offset the staffing deficit, which leaves departments understaffed, overworked, and prone to loss from burnout. Government and financial services suffer from this staffing crisis significantly as well, pointing to an industry-wide need for creative solutions to the growing talent deficit.
9. 24% increase in IT professionals with planned investments in network automation
The data reveals a sizable 24% year-over-year increase in the number of IT professionals reporting definite investment plans for network automation in 2024. This represents the largest growth across all categories surveyed. The explosion in interest aligns directly with the staffing challenges faced by most respondents this year.
With skilled IT professionals in short supply even amid rising budgets, organizations are looking to maximize their overburdened teams through automation technologies. The interest jump reflects strategic recognition that automation solutions can efficiently handle many tasks and reduce manual work.
10. Nearly 3 in 5 organizations use 50+ SaaS applications
What’s concerning here is not just that nearly 60% of organizations now actively use more than 50 SaaS apps. It’s that the majority of IT professionals are reporting either limited or zero visibility on all these SaaS and web applications we asked about.
The data also shows the number of SaaS applications increases alongside organization size, with smaller companies more likely to be unsure about what’s in use. For example, companies with 1 to 250 employees are five times more likely to not know their total SaaS application count compared to peers. We also see this trend reappear (to a lesser extent) for large enterprises with over 5,000 employees, with 3% unsure of their firm’s total number in use.
Final thoughts
The IT Trends 2024 report highlights automation, perception gaps, and investment prioritization as three critical focal points for IT leadership. With mounting complexity and staff shortages squeezing the sector, pragmatism and empowerment must take focus to sustain operational integrity.
With user experiences, security, and innovation all relying on the stability of infrastructure, all leaders must reassess assumptions to avoid blind spots. This report’s insights provide an invaluable compass for navigating the complicated route ahead.
By embracing these key trends around empowerment, clarity, and investment optimization, IT executives can better support their organizations despite mounting challenges. In the difficult conditions ahead, facts and foresight will prove the keys to success.
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