The concerns of IT leaders within the U.S. was analyzed in a survey by Rocket Software. The survey looks at the biggest challenges facing IT leaders of large organizations and their approach to modernizing their IT department. 

The report revealed that IT leaders are losing sleep over improving overall IT performance (60%), data security (50%), process risk and compliance (46%) and the need to improve agility (41%). To overcome these challenges, IT organizations are turning to hybrid solutions to leverage the benefits of the cloud and the mainframe. Ninety-three percent of respondents strongly agree with the sentence, “I believe my organization needs to embrace a hybrid infrastructure model that spans from mainframe to cloud.”

Additional key findings of the survey include:

• Respondents noted that they measure success within their IT organization by increased efficiency (71%), optimized resources (67%) and reduced risk (63%).
• 32% of respondents are extremely confident that they have the right technology, processes and people in place to execute an effective approach to IT management.
• 62% percent of respondents noted they have a much greater focus on efficiency due to the economic landscape. Respondents ranked faster DevOps processes, automated processes and increasing overall output as the top three measures that would be most impactful for increasing efficiency.
• Respondents cited software development as both the most and least efficient aspect of their IT organization.