SolarWinds Survey Reveals Nearly All IT Pros Have Been

AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwired - Jun 19, 2013) - SolarWinds ( NYSE : SWI ), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today released survey results revealing that network complexity has defined a new competitive skillset for IT professionals. Driven by new Technology combined with the evolving needs of IT Operations and Business Operations, the job of the IT pro is more complex than ever before.

These results are part of a wide-ranging survey * of 225 U.S. and Canada-based IT professionals, which was conducted last month in an effort to further understand the driving forces behind growing network complexity and to determine the skills IT professionals need to develop in order to stay competitive.

Survey Findings:

• Over 92 percent of IT professionals said network complexity has either somewhat affected or greatly affected their role/responsibilities within the last three to five years.
• Respondents indicated that the top contributing network complexity drivers across Technology, IT Operations and Business Operations were:
  • Technology - smarter/more complex equipment, compute virtualization and SDN
  • IT Operations - BYOD and mobility
  • Business Operations - security

"Network complexity is driven by many factors, both real and perceived. Two great examples are SDN, which promises to change the way networking is done in the future but is still a nascent technology, and security, a far more present and tangible problem for IT pros today," said Sanjay Castelino, VP and market leader, SolarWinds. "However, like other factors, IT pros know that change is a matter of life in this industry, and they are focused on trying to manage these drivers to help their businesses thrive."

While most IT professionals generally agree that higher education sufficiently prepared them for their current role, over 70 percent said their company needs to train IT staff to be as prepared as possible for growing network complexity.

• Network Complexity skillsets needed today :
  • Over one-quarter of IT professionals surveyed said understanding of the business is the single most important skillset needed to combat the challenges of network complexity, followed closely by network engineering and information security.
• Network Complexity skillsets needed in five years :
  • When IT pros look five years into the future to determine what will be the single most important skillset needed to combat the future challenges of network complexity, information security surpasses understanding of the business -- cloud, or SaaS also moved up on the radar of those surveyed.

"Just as networks become more dynamic, so does the role of the IT professional," said Castelino. "Wide-ranging network complexity drivers like BYOD, mobility and security are making a real impact on how IT pros manage their environments, suggesting that the IT pro with the broadest, most comprehensive set of skills will be better equipped than an IT specialist to tackle growing network complexity."

Network Management Solutions to Combat Complexity For IT pros looking for an easy-to-use management foundation designed to help them stay on top of network complexity challenges, SolarWinds delivers powerful network management functionality out of the box with the power of customization to address enterprise scale and the complexity of today's networks at a price any organization can afford.

From network performance to configuration and compliance to traffic analysis and more, IT pros can deploy SolarWinds network management products to build a robust IT management system that fits their evolving needs, including:

• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor - network performance management
• SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer - Flow-based network traffic monitoring
• SolarWinds IP Address Manager - IP address management
• SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager - VoIP and WAN performance monitoring and troubleshooting
• SolarWinds User Device Tracker - Switch port monitoring and mapping
• SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager - Network change and configuration management solution
• SolarWinds Log & Event Manager - Log collection, analysis and real-time event correlation
• SolarWinds Firewall Security Manager - Multi-vendor firewall management
• SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset - A collection of network troubleshooting tools
• SolarWinds Network Topology Mapper - Automated network diagram generator

The complete survey results can be found on SlideShare and SolarWinds' Whiteboard blog .

*The survey was conducted from May 23-28, 2013, resulting in 225 survey responses from IT practitioners, managers and directors in the U.S. and Canada from public- and private-sector small, mid-size and enterprise companies. SolarWinds will be releasing additional survey data in the coming weeks on IT professionals in the UK, Australia, Germany and Brazil.

About SolarWinds SolarWinds ( NYSE : SWI ) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. In all of our market areas, our approach is consistent. We focus exclusively on IT Pros and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. SolarWinds delivers on this commitment with unexpected simplicity through products that are easy to find, buy, use, and maintain while providing the power to address any IT management problem on any scale. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our online community, thwack , to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at http://www.solarwinds.com/ .

SolarWinds, SolarWinds.com, and thwack are registered trademarks of SolarWinds . All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.