Paessler reveals the biggest frustrations and challenges for IT system administrators

The biggest issue for IT systems administrators at work is when systems are flagged as having problems when none exist.  A third (34%) say false positives are their main issue. A similar proportion, (33%), is irritated by excessive and unnecessary notifications. 

False positives and incorrect notifications hold serious implications for businesses in terms of downtime and employee productivity. They can be a huge distraction for teams, wasting their time on problems that don’t actually exist, and preventing them from addressing actual business critical issues. 

Management reporting is also cited as being a major frustration. Nearly one quarter, (23%) say they are being tied up with gathering information for often unnecessary reports, again acting as a distraction from their day-to-day roles. 

Alongside these current frustrations, IT systems administrators also have specific concerns about what lies in the future. The current frustrations are compounded with areas that they see as upcoming challenges in the next two to three years. Half (50%) say cloud adoption is the top challenge they anticipate and two in five (41%) fear the extra pressure to maintain a resilient IT infrastructure given the increased importance and size of network operations which must now deliver for both home-based and office-based employees. 

Sebastian Dietrich, Product Marketing Manager at Paessler AG:  

“IT teams face frequent frustration with having to go round in circles when things appear to be going wrong but are in fact not. From a cost, downtime, and productivity perspective this can be very damaging to a business. Minimising false positives is critical so teams have a much better, more accurate picture of how their IT infrastructure is actually performing, focusing on key areas that need fixing rather than wild goose chases for those that don’t.”