An apology letter to IT

Dear IT, we owe you an apology.

To IT teams everywhere, we’re sorry. We’re sorry for the endless To Do list that never seems to go away. In fact, it seems to only get longer, and we know it feels even more impossible to get your head above water every single day. The overwhelming number of security threats. The never-ending Windows updates. Helpdesk requests and self-inflicted errors caused by rogue software that users install without permission. The ridiculous number of mobile devices we’ve introduced into the landscape, which we expect you to protect and maintain. You’re swimming faster and faster, but still drowning in tasks. And, we know that you’re getting tired.

We admit that we’ve not made your job easy. In fact, we’ve actually made it much, much harder. Your task list has grown exponentially as our modern workplace is becoming increasingly mobile and remote work is now the norm rather than the exception.

Users ignore your recommendations for keeping their devices clean, secure and up to date. They fire up machines and shut them down before you even have a chance to remotely check-in to assess their status and health. And, when they experience a problem or provide an open port for malware, they’re frustrated that you weren’t able to prevent it.

At the same time, you’re facing a major vendor agenda problem. As large IT solution vendors compete to own a bigger and bigger part of the IT landscape, they’re constantly pushing updates at you, forcing you to spend more time working with beta features, testing and verifying that these new releases won’t wreak havoc on the network and end user machines. Testing Microsoft updates and features alone might make up 40 percent of your workload, which doesn’t leave much time for other tasks.

Hence, the list grows larger, and with it, the stress. The inability to really make a dent in your task list has a profound impact on your enthusiasm and motivation. You feel ineffective, inefficient, defeated and burned out.

The bottom line: We expect you to do more and do it faster as the rate of technological change and adoption of new tech accelerates every single day. Yet we’ve failed to give you the tools required to keep pace with these increasing demands. As the workplace has evolved, the solutions you’ve relied on for the last 10 years simply aren’t enough to keep pace.

For all of this, we apologize. And, we owe it to you to make it right, to help alleviate the overwhelming burden of the endless To Do list.

Here’s what we plan to do:

• Automate wherever possible. We know that asking you to perform many common, routine, manual tasks is time-consuming and frankly, a waste of your talent. You didn’t invest in a college degree and continuing education to sit with a machine and hit "Continue" all day to apply each bi-weekly Windows update. To make better use of your time and talent, we pledge to automate rote tasks like updates, system patching and more, so that you can focus on more strategic tasks, solve problems and help us overcome challenges -- the stuff that you really want to do and that rekindles your enthusiasm for technology and coming to work every day.
• Give you real-time tools that make you more proactive. Don’t worry, we have no intention of replacing you with automated tools. Instead, we plan to give you real-time proactive solutions that augment your skills, allow you to ask questions and get the immediate answers you need to be more effective. While artificial intelligence is great, it’s no match for the strategic thinking and problem solving that you bring to the table. With real-time tools that let you see what’s happening right now on every machine across the network, you can be much more effective at preventing problems, stopping bad actors and taking advantage of opportunities.
• You might be thinking, "More tools? Ugh! That just means more work!" But, hear us out. Our aim is to consolidate tools at the endpoint, to implement a single agent that sends intelligence from multiple vendors for multiple purposes to the cloud. This means security, hardware admin, Windows management, driver maintenance, etc. -- soup to nuts for managing the endpoint -- all comes together in a single agent with a single dashboard. Our goal is to give you more data, more visibility and more control with LESS technology to interfere with machine performance, to reduce your workload and to shrink the surface area for potential malware attacks. We intend to give you what you need to truly do more with less -- and with less stress.

The first step to solving a problem is to admit that there’s a problem. And, there’s no denying it here. We see it in your exhausted expression, your slumped shoulders, your exasperated sigh when we ask you to add yet another task to your never-ending list.

But, know that we are committed to making it right, to getting you the right tools, the automated assistance and intelligence platforms you need to keep pace with our increasing demands, and to actually get the work done. While managing our ever-growing and ever-evolving technological landscape will forever continue to be a challenge, you deserve solutions that give you at least a fighting chance. We hear you, and help is on the way.

Sumir Karayi founded 1E, an endpoint management and security company, in 1997 with the goal to drive down the cost of IT for organizations of all sizes. 1E enables IT to deliver comprehensive self-service and respond in real-time by augmenting Microsoft and ServiceNow solutions. Under Sumir’s leadership, 1E has become a successful global organization with offices in New York, Ireland, Australia, and Delhi. 1E is also a trusted partner, with 26 million licenses deployed across more than 1,700 organizations in 42 countries worldwide.