Singapore employees blame poor IT support for own performance

Some 90 percent of employees in Singapore expect their company's IT team to maintain the performance of cloud applications used in the office, and 77 percent will blame IT support if their own work performance is affected.

Clearly, IT professionals now faced increasing pressure to ensure technology used within as well as outside their traditional scope of control remained up and running, according to research released by SolarWinds. The findings were part of two surveys conducted by Harris Poll that polled 674 end-users in Singapore as well as 276 IT professionals globally.

The Singapore study revealed that 60 percent of employees connected, on average, two more devices today, compared to a decade ago, including those issued by their company and their personal devices.

Another 60 percent said they connected, on average, two more personally-owned devices to corporate networks than they did 10 years ago. Some 77 percent said they connected a laptop or desktop computer to their corporate network, while 65 percent did likewise with a smartphone and 22 percent with a tablet.

Another 21 percent said they connected other less conventional devices, such as Bluetooth speakers, wearable technology, and e-readers, to their corporate network.

Asked if it was their IT team's fault if they could not access cloud applications to work, 77 percent agreed or strongly agreed. Some 80 percent expected the same level of performance and support from the IT team when they accessed work applications outside of the office.

Another 80 percent expected their company's IT professionals to ensure "consistent availability and performance" even for their personally-owned devices that were connected to the corporate network. These included instances where their smartphone was connected to access work e-mail and their wearable device had to connect to the corporate Wi-Fi network.

SolarWinds CTO and Senior Vice President Joseph Kim said: "We want to draw attention to the mounting responsibility being placed on IT professionals to manage an ever-expanding array of technologies--both those owned by businesses and those beyond, such as end user-owned devices and cloud applications provided by third-party vendors."

"More than ever, end users are connecting more devices including those personally-owned, to corporate networks, relying on cloud-based applications, and working outside the four walls of traditional offices," Kim added. "These are all trends that take direct control out of the hands of IT departments, yet, as the surveys also demonstrate, the demands on IT professionals to support and ensure the performance of related technologies are just as high."

Pointing to the global survey on IT professionals, SolarWinds said 60 percent revealed their companies allowed the use of cloud applications, while 71 percent estimated that their organisation's employees occasionally used non-IT sanctioned cloud applications.

Some 43 percent said employees expected the same time to resolution for issues involving both company-issued and personally-owned devices and technology.