Ipswitch Survey: Summer Is A Hard Time To Keep IT Networks Running Smoothly

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

IT professionals felt heat this summer — thanks to growing pressure to keep networks running smoothly. According to the inaugural Ipswitch Summertime Blues Survey, with growing numbers of remote workers, broken laptops, and bring-you-own-device (BYOD) policies, it’s more of a chore to manage IT networks.

“The summer months are a busy time for IT pros, as employees expect continuous unfettered access to company networks while working from home or on vacation. A single organization can find itself with a significant bump in remote workers, all of whom may need support and assistance,” Jeff Loeb, CMO at Ipswitch, explained in a statement.

According to the survey, the most common summertime user problems were malfunctioning laptops (42 percent), no remote access (32 percent), poor performance (16 percent), and lost or forgotten passwords (10 percent).

The survey, which polled 239 U.S. IT professionals, also found that vacation time for in-house IT employees is also affected: 25 percent of respondents indicated that vacation time was more restricted than for other departments within their organization, and even when taking vacation, more than one quarter of all respondents admitted they will experience stressed over the state of their network while they are away.

Ipswitch points out network and server monitoring can help mitigate this issue.