The Desire to be Recognised as Having a Tough Job More Than Doubles Since Last Year

LONDON, ENGLAND - July 25, 2014 - In honour of today's 15th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day, or SysAdmin Day, Ipswitch® has released the findings of its second annual "Red Shirt Survey" taken last week by more than 150 systems administrators from across the UK. The survey results indicate that there's a lot more that can be done to appreciate, motivate and collaborate with IT pros.

When asked what would make them feel more empowered at work, over half (51.4%) of network professionals surveyed simply want the recognition of having a tough job, over double last year's figure.  In addition, only a quarter of respondents (25.1%) indicated the ability to choose and buy the technology they need would make them feel more empowered, down by almost half from last year.  Perhaps, it would seem, indicating that increased IT spend from the economic recovery is starting to impact on the network professional's daily workload.

The survey also highlights that the consumerisation of technology and mass adoption of mobile devices is proving to bring both happiness and headaches to the door of the network professional.

When asked what users could do to make network administrators' lives happier, only a fifth of survey respondents cited a desire for more users to reboot their machines before asking for help (20.05% percent) compared to over a third (36%) wanting the same last year.  This result could indicate that either users are getting smarter at solving their own IT glitches, or that network professionals are becoming more tolerant.

Whilst network admins seem to be happier in one respect, the survey clearly demonstrates that Shadow IT, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Wear Your Own Device (WYOD) are a growing issue for network administrators.  Shadow IT is more than twice the headache for network professionals this year, with 13.5% of respondents saying that they would have an easier life if users would share what applications they've downloaded on their laptops.  Additionally, the number of administrators wanting employees to share what personal devices they have synced to their company's wireless network has tripled within a year, to 14.8%.

Given that nearly half of admins surveyed (46.5%) indicated that they spend between 40-60 percent of their time reacting to network or user problems, an increase of more than 10 percent from last year (and 18 percent spend a whopping 60-80 percent doing so) it's no surprise that they'd like more appreciation.

"Today we need to recognise the dedicated SysAdmins and other IT professionals who work night and day to keep our networks and applications humming along. These IT heroes need to equip their colleagues with the technology and support they need to innovate, collaborate and do their jobs and that's a lot of pressure to work under. So when you see one of your SysAdmin colleagues today, a simple ‘thank you for everything you do' would go over well. Treating your IT folks to pizza and ice cream wouldn't hurt, either," explained Ennio Carboni, Executive Vice President, Customer Solutions, Ipswitch.

How network monitoring can make a SysAdmin's work life a lot happier
SysAdmins can take control of their networks with a comprehensive, automated network monitoring solution run from a single dashboard. Empowered with this technology, IT professionals can:

Respond to network problems before users notice, and keep application performance steady
Discover and map an IT infrastructure (at Layer 2/3)
Receive network alerts when unauthorized changes are uncovered or when performance falls below set levels