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On June 15th, 2022, JumpCloud’s 2022 State of the SME IT Admin Report was released. This is the third annual report that JumpCloud has commissioned, and it contains data from responses collected from 506 U.S. IT professionals and 501 U.K. IT professionals that work across a wide variety of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The purpose of this report is to check in on the overall state of the 2022 IT admin, which includes finding areas of both struggle and success. This information is essential for the organizations themselves, as well as third party vendors, clients, and all other stakeholders that are connected to IT to understand so that improvements can be made wherever possible.
Annual surveys are a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in your organization, across industries, and around the world. Rather than guessing or assuming what’s going on, getting authentic responses and information from real people makes it a lot easier to prioritize, make decisions, and change direction based on the most recent and relevant data.
On top of that, comparing data from the current year to past years can be eye opening when trying to gauge whether certain initiatives made a positive/neutral/negative difference.
Key Themes Across Responses
In the 2022 State of the SME IT Report, we discovered some key themes across responses, which are:
- Organizations are still wrestling with the demands of modern workplace models (remote vs hybrid vs in-office).
- Not only are organizations dealing with typical internal struggles, they’re also trying to recover from past and prepare for future uncertainty that has emerged due to various world events (global health concerns, war, supply chain issues, labor shortages, economic worries, etc.).
- IT professionals’ biggest concern right now is security.
- There is also a focus on IT stack unification and centralization — many organizations want to use fewer tools to get the same work accomplished but are facing some obstacles around this.
- Despite all of this, on average, IT professionals are happier than they were this time last year, and they’re as committed as ever to ensuring that work happens as simply and securely as possible.
Notable 2022 Survey Findings
The Focus is on Security and Remote Work Management
When asked about the biggest challenges IT teams have faced since April 2021, 59.4% said security, followed by device management (48.1%), migrating workers to some form of remote work (47.8%), and ongoing management of remote workers (45.5%).
External and World Events are Stretching Organizations Thin
When asked if the war in Ukraine has impacted their organization, 39.7% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed, 23.5% were neutral, and 36.7% disagreed.
When asked about recession planning, 26.2% of respondents said “Yes, we’re doing recession planning”, 32.7% said “We’re considering it, but nothing yet”, and 24.7% said “No, we aren’t doing any recession planning but it’s a good idea”, while the final 16.4% said “No” or “I don’t know”.
When asked if supply chain disruptions and/or product shortages have hurt their business, 2.8% of respondents said “Disastrously”, 30.5% said “Significantly”, 28.1% said “Somewhat”, and the final 38.6% either chose “Neutral” or “Not at all”.
IT Stack Unification Goals
When asked if they would prefer to use a single tool/solution to do their job over managing a number of different solutions, 74.6% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed, while 25.4% disagreed.
Gauging IT Job Satisfaction
When asked how they felt about the statement: I am happier in my job than I was a year ago, 60.4% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed, 27.2% feel the same as they did last year, with only 12.4% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
The state of the world around us is constantly changing, and so is the world of the IT admin. IT is an integral department that lays the groundwork for everything else in an organization to be built upon. Because of this, it’s integral to keep an eye on IT’s biggest concerns, priorities, and accomplishments to keep the organization on track and improve employee satisfaction.
The 2022 SME IT Report goes into each question on the survey and provides intriguing details on current and predicted trends — it’s a great resource to reference when planning out the rest of 2022 and beyond.
Read the entire 2022 State of the SME IT Admin Report to get more insight into 2022-2023 trends.
