Automating IT yields cost-saving benefits, according to survey (with related video)

Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds recently unveiled the results of its 2014 public sector survey on IT automation. It’s safe to say, based on results of the survey, that governments are eager to modernize IT operations in agencies. One of the findings from the survey: Automating IT management is a goal for 63 percent of government IT professionals in 2014. Respondents also revealed their plans to continue automation investments for the rest of 2014. A total of 162 IT professionals in government completed the survey.

Among respondents who have already begun to implement a variety of automation technologies, network configuration management was deemed the most valuable tool for saving time and money. Some 58 percent of respondents ranked network configuration management most valuable. Other top finishers included: help desk automation (42 percent), IP address management (39 percent), and application/server provisioning and configuration management (37 percent).

Another finding from the report: IT staffs in agencies remain lean. More than half (53 percent) of respondents said their IT departments have not hired any new IT pros in the past two years.

SolarWinds offers a variety of products that are designed to make IT professionals’ jobs easier. The firm offers tools that aim to solve a range of IT management challenges that are related to networks, servers, applications, storage or virtualization.

The company counts government agencies among its customers. Its IT management software is available on the GSA Schedule, the Defense Department’s ESI, and other contract vehicles.

In this video, Chis LaPoint, vice president of product management at SolarWinds, highlights some of the findings in his firm’s recent survey of government IT administrators. LaPoint notes the significant cost-savings that the administrators reported through their agency’s IT upgrades. He also explains that training IT staff on new systems, especially in state and local governments, can be as daunting as shrinking budgets, as agencies work to modernize systems.

IT administrators, says LaPoint, are trying to stay current with bring-your-own-device policies, virtualization, the cloud and other recent developments. In the interview, LaPoint compares recent IT developments to some of the fast-changing sequences and events in the movie “The Matrix.”

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