Cloud adoption has made it easier for IT (information technology) personnel to perform IT management as the workforce resorted to remote work setup or telecommuting. This is one of the results of ManageEngine’s latest survey of 500 global IT professionals who were asked about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in their business operations.

ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corp., worked with the developers of ServiceDesk Plus, an IT service management suite (ITSM) unit, focused the survey on five areas: impact of employees working remote, financial and asset management implications, security and governance issues, third-party services and technology assistance, and business continuity success levels.

Five key advantages for enterprises effectively leveraging analytics

Enterprises must invest in threat intelligence systems to mitigate security risks

“The pandemic has brought IT organizations to the front line from the back office overnight,” said Rajesh Ganesan, VP, ManageEngine. “How well a business has performed in the last few months has a lot to do with how well an IT organization has been able to enable remote work, and this trend will only intensify. As businesses strive to survive, compete, and eventually lead in these tough times, closing the technology gaps highlighted in the survey will be a priority.”

ITSM

ServiceDesk Plus, ManageEngine’s flagship product, is an information technology infrastructure library-ready help desk software.

The survey finds that 78% of respondents say they were able to meet the challenges of remote work even if most employees are working beyond the corporate perimeter and that the data and tools local to the network are out of reach by utilizing cloud services.

Twenty-eight percent of organizations still don’t have self-service cloud facilities and virtual agent (24%) technologies to offset the workload. It is worth investing in them, as the survey evidenced a high correlation of remote ITSM success among organizations that are leveraging such tools.

IT budget increase

The survey also found 4 out of 5 respondents believe IT will have a greater appreciation in terms of budgets, salaries and recognition of efforts, post-crisis. Only 15% of organizations were under-equipped with the necessary applications and tools to enable remote working, well into the crisis.

Only 40% of organizations confidently agreed that they are equipped to tackle the increase in security and privacy concerns related to employees working outside the office.

Among the organizations that outsourced ITSM, over 70% were satisfied with their MSP’s performance. However, IT self-service was non-existent in 28% of the respondent’s organization.

The ManageEngine survey found that organizations are prepared for a crisis like most of them had a business continuity plan (BCP), leaving only 20% without one.