IT operations teams are feeling swarmed by the number of tools they use for monitoring. 

According to a new survey from OpsRamp, a vast majority of respondents (95%) indicated that they use at least five tools on a daily basis. Half of respondents said they used more than 10 tools. 

These numbers have the potential to change in the near future, as 37% reported they’d like to cut the number of tools they use by half in the next year. 

Only 27% of respondents were satisfied with their current monitoring tools. Twenty-one percent indicated that they were not satisfied, and 52% said they were moderately satisfied. 

Areas for improvement in tooling included the ability to monitor hybrid, multi-cloud, and cloud-native infrastructure; the ability to integrate data and automate incident response; and the ability to support business goals with relevant insights. 

According to the report, platform security is the more critical aspect of an IT ops solution, which OpsRamp doesn’t find that surprising based on the media attention on cyberattacks. Other important tool attributes are hybrid infrastructure management and SaaS and multi-tenant architecture. 

IT leaders are also finding value in digital operations management platforms that offer hybrid, multi-cloud, and cloud-native monitoring capabilities; intelligent incident management; and automated remediation. Fifty-six percent of respondents plan on deploying such a solution this year. 

The report also found that AIOps has been a focal point for “tool rationalization” because it acts as a sort of connective tissue for tooling. AIOps can provide insights across different tools for IT monitoring, service management, and process automation.

According to the report, 48% have prioritized AIOps across IT environments. Forty-two percent have already deployed AIOps and another 55% plan to roll out AIOps this year. 

“This study exposes new priorities for IT ops pros and validates many of our hypotheses on the future of IT operations,” said George Bonser, vice president of EMEA Sales for OpsRamp. “The pandemic accelerated many of the mid-flight digital transformation initiatives. Tools are a valuable part of the IT operations portfolio, but the future belongs to digital operations management platforms that can consolidate data across hybrid environments, apply machine learning to drive faster incident analysis, and use process automation to handle repetitive work.”

OpsRamp conducted the survey in March and it includes responses from 132 IT directors in the UK.