3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

With the remains of Christmas dinner now cooling in refrigerators all around the world, carefully-chosen gifts opened and some slated for return, and the end of 2014 now in sight, Ipswitch (News - Alert) recently returned to a survey of note from last year. Specifically, it launched its second “Happy Holidays?” survey targeting IT professionals in the United States, and discovered that, for many, the holidays wouldn't be quite so happy thanks to issues at work.

The Ipswitch survey noted that 49 percent of all respondents in the survey were either actively working this holiday season or were otherwise on call, and whether or not the respondents fell into that class, nearly as many—48 percent—would be actively thinking about work when not specifically in the office. Indeed, the Ipswitch survey reported that some major but standard problems are in the cards for said IT professionals as 2014 comes to a close.

One of the biggest problems, according to the survey, was the issue of remote access. With vacations and holiday closures shutting down many businesses, employees often go remote to make sure a closed business isn't completely hobbled for the day. But remote access, when not routine, can be difficult, and so 57 percent of respondents noted remote access as a problem. Remote access also has implications for a network, so poor application performance and forgotten passwords both chipped in at 18 percent each to qualify as major problems.

IT professionals even had a “naughty list” of sorts to identify key causes of problems in the industry. Executives got the lion's share of coal from the naughty list at 24 percent, but fellow employees weren't far behind at 20 percent. Vendors, meanwhile, stayed generally nice, with only 12 percent looking to vendors to head the naughty list. However, no one was without blame, as 32 percent of all respondents noted that all three deserved some kind of blame involved. Indeed, with Christmas coming, so too is likely coming another problem in a load of new gadgets. With Apple (News - Alert) hardware like iPads and iPhones making a hit, not to mention the Apple Watch, it's likely to mean troubles for the network as outside gadgets connect to the network and cause performance issues. IT pros looked for trouble from smartphones most at 35 percent, wearable technology items at 26 percent, laptops at 23 percent and tablets at 16 percent.

So how to turn all this around? The biggest point to save Christmas—and the time immediately thereafter—is the use of unified network monitoring solutions, as well as server performance monitoring solutions. Our expectations of constantly operating networks—as well as our need for such things—means that IT professionals will likely never be completely off, even for the holidays. But with tools like these in place, problems can be more readily solved, and some can even be spotted in advance. That means more and better quality downtime, and that IT professionals get that important downtime that all workers really need.

Christmas is an important time of year. Whether it's a connection to family, a discovery of the value of charity, or just a time to stretch out and relax for a bit, there's value to be had. Making it just another work day doesn't do anyone any good, and with the right tools, even IT professionals can get some of that valuable downtime back.