Remotely managing endpoint estates is a growing challenge for the modern workforce.
The increase in remote working means IT leaders have more responsibility than ever and, in turn, demands are rising. However, IT teams' capacity to fulfil digital business priorities often takes a back seat.
Computing's latest research in this area, conducted in partnership with Intel, reveals how IT leaders are coping with workloads and the proliferation of endpoint devices.
Only a third of 150 survey respondents (all IT decision makers involved in endpoint strategy or implementation at their organisation) say their IT team's ability to tackle company objectives is at least ‘good', while 44 per cent say it is ‘adequate' and 19 per cent admit it is ‘poor' or ‘very poor.'
IT teams are time-poor
For many, this is because IT personnel are being bogged down in day-to-day management and support, detracting from their organisation's longer-term productivity and development. Thanks to advances in digital capabilities, BYOD and geographically spread devices are the norm, but IT teams can struggle to keep pace. Around half of survey respondents agree that endpoint management takes up too much of their IT personnel's daily time, and that efficiency and innovation struggle as a consequence.
Endpoint manageability must be remote, secure, and seamless for users. They expect fast, straightforward access from anywhere, anytime. Employees are rarely on-site and often keep to their own schedule. Remotely patching, onboarding, and accessing their devices, independent to device power and OS states, is now essential - modern businesses will simply not maintain proper IT standards without effective endpoint management. Because of this, organisations are seeing their IT team's availability become increasingly depleted wherever they lack effective endpoint management capabilities.
Assess and refresh
Seventy-seven per cent of respondents agree that reliable and scalable remote endpoint management would reduce their personnel's workload. Effectively monitoring and supporting endpoint estates, and updating devices when appropriate, will ensure solutions have modern feature sets that meet organisational needs. According to Computing's findings, typical endpoint refresh cycles are greater than three years and around a third of respondents refresh their estates every five years or more.
In many cases, organisations are clearly failing to take a long-term approach to assessing and modernising their endpoint manageability at the point of refresh. Without such evaluation, vulnerabilities go undetected and improvement opportunities are missed.
Monitoring device health and, therefore, device compliance should be a key initiative when refreshing endpoint manageability. As PC fleets expand, ensuring endpoints are up to date, performant, and secure is crucial in avoiding preventable support issues.
Endpoint manageability challenges and the IT workload that comes with it are set to remain. To reduce IT burdens, lost productivity, and security vulnerabilities, ensure your endpoint estate is visible and performant through regular review and refresh. IT teams can then prioritise and focus on broader digital objectives.
IT leaders must plan ahead and look outwards. Moving to modern management tools, and supporting hardware platforms, will guarantee endpoint estates are maintained as efficiently and effectively as possible. Streamlined endpoint manageability that permits remote endpoint updating, troubleshooting, and administering, whenever and wherever, is vital to remain competitive and productive.
To learn more about Computing's latest research into the endpoint manageability state of the nation, read the full report.
This article is sponsored by Intel
