Cloud, DevOps and other emerging information technology platforms and practices are not simplifying operations, according to a new survey of public sector IT professionals from Clarus Research Group, underwritten by machine data analysis software provider Splunk.
Slightly more than half (51 percent) of the 634 federal, state, and local government and higher education IT decision-makers polled felt that rapid adoption of new technologies is adding complexity. Of the survey pool, 71 percent agreed IT data insights offer valuable insights, but the continued use of manual processes is hampering greater system visibility.
Nearly half (44 percent) of respondents also identified insufficient resources — such as budget and staff constraints — as the biggest risk facing their group.
Of the federal IT personnel spoken to, 62 percent of national security respondents agreed the increasingly complexity of operations is causing issues, compared to 48 percent of domestic respondents who held the same belief.
There was agreement among 76 percent of federal IT professionals that IT insights are extremely or very important to their department or agency’s mission; however, 66 percent (70 percent domestic, 63 percent national security) of respondents said their organizations still would likely gather information manually, contributing to 47 percent saying their organizations don’t have holistic visibility across IT systems.
There was also a belief among 76 percent of respondents that some security data being gathered could be used for IT operations.
Only 22 percent of federal IT survey participants said their organization had enough optimized analytics tools. Operational silos, the multiple formats and types of data, and the cumbersome nature of data ingestion were cited as major obstacles to gaining insights and operational efficiency.
Almost 70 percent, if not more, of respondents identified solutions that could be potentially adopted in the coming years, including the expanded use of server monitoring and analytics (74 percent), network infrastructure monitoring analytics (71 percent) and commercial off-the-shelf solutions (69 percent).
A complete breakdown of the survey can be found on the Splunk website.
