Working in IT administration is a stressful endeavor. Granted, there’s no comparison with brain surgery or air traffic control; but it is a field that few people understand from the outside looking in. Non-technical people don’t really get what an IT guy does every day, so they can’t understand the level of stress they bear.
If you were in any doubt as to just how stressed many IT professionals find themselves, check out this survey conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of GFI back in 2013. This revealed that nearly 58% of IT admins consider a switch to a different career on at least an occasional basis.
At the root of the stress for many IT admins is a lack of time. Since the financial crisis of 2008, very few companies have been generous with their IT budgets, resulting in, already time-stretched, IT admins having more and more work piled onto them. The increased use of mobile devices means that mobile device management (MDM) has been added to their job list.
Since time travel isn’t possible (sigh!), the only real way to create more time is for IT admins to work into the evenings and weekends. It’s clear that forward-thinking IT admins must learn to work smarter rather than harder – and that’s where GFI Cloud can help.
Tasks that waste time
Tom Limoncelli, a renowned sys admin and public speaker, is quoted as saying that working in IT is “like gardening.” Essentially, it’s a task that’s never finished. There will always be new virus threats, new patches, new users, and other regular events that take up valuable time.
The average IT admin spends a lot of time on routine tasks that, let’s face it, are often unchallenging and dull, yet depressingly essential.
This is where GFI Cloud offers a sweet release for IT admins – it is specifically designed with these tasks in mind. With modules covering everything from patch management to server monitoring and asset tracking, GFI Cloud removes the “legwork” from these crucial routine tasks, freeing up IT admins to get involved in more interesting projects and to respond to the day-to-day user issues that will inevitably crop up regardless of the IT department’s level of proactivity!
How much time?
So how much time can GFI Cloud realistically save?
Well, we don’t need to guess, as we can turn to real-life case studies to find out.
ScooterBug, a supplier of scooters, ECVs, strollers, wheelchairs to the US, Disney and Universal and more, use GFI Cloud for antivirus, patch management, web protection and monitoring. They have 70 PCs and five servers, spread across nine locations. They estimate that GFI Cloud’s implementation has saved their two-man IT department 25 hours per week.
Similarly, The Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company, which runs with a one-man IT department, estimates a time saving of 10 hours per week due to a more proactive approach to virus infections and software issues.
Looking at these studies alone, IT teams could save a minimum of 10 weekly hours per IT admin by implementing GFI Cloud. Extrapolate this over a year, and you’re looking at weeks of saved time to concentrate on non-routine tasks or bigger projects like infrastructure upgrades.
One has to wonder if IT admins considering a career change would change their minds if they could save so much time.
If you’d like to see how much time you could save with GFI Cloud, you can start a free trial today.
