Hybrid IT Blind Spots Become a Business Reality

Hybrid IT is here to stay as companies in the U.S., U.K. and Australia grapple with a mix of on-premises and cloud solutions. This creates significant headaches in infrastructure monitoring, creating issues from cloud economics to supporting AI.

The conclusion comes from the Future Further report, conducted by SaaS-based unified observability platform provider LogicMonitor. It explored the infrastructure blindspots that have the biggest impact on business success with a survey of 500 global IT leaders.

The survey showed that companies face immense pressure from new challenges, including rocky cloud migrations, AI demands, chaotic infrastructure monitoring solutions, competing job priorities and more.

“For every business, building for the future starts with vision and insights. But without the proper tools, IT leaders are flying blind,” said Christina Kosmowski, chief executive officer at LogicMonitor.

“In a world where hybrid IT infrastructure is here to stay, the LogicMonitor Future Further report validates the importance of giving IT leaders and their teams the ability to clearly see what’s happening now to create the opportunities to plan for tomorrow,” she continued.

The report noted that the massive push for cloud migration in the past 10 years has slowed. A key reason is emerging business macroeconomics. A hybrid IT infrastructure model dominates the landscape, causing chaos between on-premises and cloud infrastructure monitoring tools. The report noted:

• Over a third (36%) of IT leaders said they won't conduct any further cloud migration through 2025 as those macroeconomic forces have taken hold.
• Budget cuts and cost considerations negatively impact cloud migration for 80% of IT leaders.
• Three out of every four (76%) organizations with hybrid infrastructure have separate monitoring tools for their on-premises and cloud stacks.
• 74% of IT leaders report spending more than a full business day each week troubleshooting and reacting to incidents

“Our research findings make it easy to empathize with IT leaders – almost half of them only have bad things to say about their current monitoring approach. While facing pressure from their teams to get ahead of any issues, they are too busy fighting fires to get the chance to proactively deliver on the mission of the business,” said Ryan Worobel, chief information officer at LogicMonitor.

"This isn't just an issue for IT teams; this is a business-critical problem. More than a third of the leaders we surveyed said they have put off projects that have the potential to increase revenue. That is a clear wake-up call," he said.

Beyond new cloud economics, AI is making a significant impact. The research noted that while companies are excited about the emerging technology's potential, their underlying architectures may not be ready.

With multiple infrastructure monitoring tools that aren't part of a cohesive approach, the challenge to implement and benefit from AI is growing.

Only half (50%) of IT leaders said their company's current infrastructure is equipped to handle greater use of AI. This means teams are constantly reacting, troubleshooting and receiving complaints, demands and blame, said the report.

The report also highlighted that leaders are constantly in fight-or-flight, leading to employee burnout and high turnover rates. Specifically, it observed:

• While respondents have ideas for how to solve business problems using their data, 74% said they lack the time and resources to turn those ideas into meaningful action.
• 35% of IT leaders said they’ve put off projects that increase revenue to instead focus on responding to incidents.

The report called for a more cohesive IT infrastructure monitoring combining intelligence and alerts. It highlighted the case for full observability as a boon for long-term resiliency and growth.

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