Report Finds Most IT Teams Overestimate Operational Resilience Despite Gaps in Workflow, Staffing, and Metrics
SolarWinds, a leading provider of simple, powerful, secure observability and IT management software, today released its 2025 IT Trends Report, "Fragile to Agile: The State of Operational Resilience." The report captures the current state of operational resilience and how companies are navigating their most pressing IT challenges. In partnership with UserEvidence, SolarWinds surveyed more than 600 IT leaders across nine countries to assess how organizations define, measure, and achieve operational resilience in a rapidly evolving landscape.
The findings show that while nine in 10 IT professionals describe their organizations as resilient, fewer than half feel confident handling core challenges like:
- Bring-your-own-device policies (26%)
- Managing increasing user expectations (36%)
- Artificial intelligence (38%)
- Remote and distributed workforces (45%)
- Managing cyberthreats (52%)
"When faced with IT problems and disruptions, urgency may pressure companies to turn to tactical technology fixes, like new tools or innovations," said RJ Gazarek, senior director of product marketing at SolarWinds. "However, as this report suggests, technology without a holistic game plan will not breed the results they're looking for. Organizations must consider the people using the technology, their expertise, and how users plan to leverage the tools provided to them."
Barriers to Achieving Operational Resilience
Instead of pointing to a lack of proper technology as a leading factor, respondents reference workflow issues and team construction as key factors behind inadequate issue prevention and mitigation:
- 53% say inefficient workflows slow issue response
- 36% cite understaffing as a key challenge
- Only 13% say they lack the right tools
Many organizations also fail to track critical metrics like MTTx (mean time to detect, acknowledge, or resolve). Of those who do, most cite tooling (73%), workflow (67%), and team structure (44%) as major influences on performance.
Consequences of Insufficient Operational Resilience: Customer Impacts and Business Risk
When organizations can't achieve operational resilience, the consequences fall on their customers. As a result, reputation and branding can become casualties.
According to the data:
- 71% of respondents note customer experience as a core concern stemming from critical issues and system outages
- One third (32%) of respondents said they lost revenue from outages and critical issues
- Over a quarter (28%) of respondents also cite brand damage, which relates to both revenue and customer experience if customers view the application as unreliable
"In today's competitive environment, operational resilience is no longer a nice-to-have but rather a strategic imperative," said Cullen Childress, chief product officer at SolarWinds. "Achieving it requires more than just adopting new technology. Organizations must equip their IT teams with the right tools, workflows, and talent to stay agile and responsive. When obstacles are removed and resilience is built into daily operations, IT becomes a true driver of competitive advantage."
The Building Blocks to Operational Resilience
The report outlines an actionable framework:
- Map relationships: Understand dependencies between systems and teams
- Identify process gaps: Audit what's working and what's not
- Reassess tooling: Invest in tools that support visibility, collaboration, and response
To explore the full findings and learn how your organization can build stronger operational resilience, download the report at: https://www.solarwinds.com/campaign/it-trends
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About SolarWinds
SolarWinds is a leading provider of simple, powerful, secure observability and IT management software built to enable customers to accelerate their digital transformation. Our solutions provide organizations worldwide-regardless of type, size, or complexity-with a comprehensive and unified view of today's modern, distributed, and hybrid network environments. We continuously engage with IT service and operations professionals, DevOps and SecOps professionals, and database administrators (DBAs) to understand the challenges they face in maintaining high-performing and highly available hybrid IT infrastructures, applications, and environments. The insights we gain from them, in places like our THWACK community, allow us to address customers' needs now and in the future. Our focus on the user and our commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT management have established SolarWinds as a worldwide leader in solutions for observability, IT service management, application performance, and database management. Learn more today at www.solarwinds.com.
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Contacts:
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Dillon Townsel
SolarWinds
Phone: +1-512-571-3455
pr@solarwinds.com
