IT teams are struggling to keep tool sprawl in check, with 48% of respondents to JumpCloud’s 8th annual SME IT Trends survey saying they use five to 10 IT management tools.

Twenty-six percent of IT teams reported using more than 11 tools for IT management. Despite IT teams using many tools, 85% expressed their preference would be to have a single tool. 

Managing too many tools across their organization as a whole is also continuing to be a challenge, putting companies at greater risk for security issues. Thirty percent of respondents take hours to roll out new OS patches, 43% take days, 22% take weeks, and 5% take months. 

Sixty percent of respondents say that security is their biggest challenge. The biggest security concerns include software vulnerabilities (cited by 34% of respondents), network attacks (33%), use of unsecured networks (26%), and ransomware (26%). 

IT teams also worry that implementing stronger security controls would be detrimental to user experience (46% of respondents). Other security roadblocks reported include already having too many tools (36%), lack of budget (32%), inability to hire more staff (29%), and inadequate IT experience (20%).

“IT teams are operating in a high-stakes environment where complexity and speed are often at odds with security and control,” said Rajat Bhargava, co-founder and CEO of JumpCloud. 

Shadow IT also continues to be a challenge for IT teams to deal with. The biggest reason for this for 38% of respondents is that they don’t have the ability to discover all applications. Thirty-nine percent also said business users are moving faster than IT can keep up and 35% say they have more important priorities.  

Other interesting findings of the report include:

  • 77% expect their IT budget to increase over the next year
  • 39% spend 26-50% of their budget on licensing
  • 72% of admins have either gone through layoffs or are anticipating them in the next six months
  • The lowest spending priorities are zero trust (16%) and additional headcount (22%)

For this survey, JumpCloud partnered with Propeller Insights and surveyed 900 IT decision-makers across the U.S., U.K., and Australia between November 4th to 11th, 2024.