Over half (52 per cent) of businesses are struggling to manage their IT infrastructure as a result of creaking legacy systems, poorly co-ordinated strategy and inadequate monitoring tools, according to a new report.

A study of 141 IT professions for digital transformation platform Opsview found that many companies have unfit IT strategies in place to adequately support their digital transformation projects – even though many agree it’s a top priority.

A quarter of respondents said that they struggle to effectively monitor the health of their organisation’s IT systems, while 21 per cent said that legacy systems prevent growth and scalability, and seven per cent noted that legacy, people and process stopped them operating in a dynamic way.

The study also found that collaboration and integration between departments were key to firms meeting their digital transformation goals, with the strategy rolled out across the business rather than restricted to the IT team.

However, just 22 per cent said they had a fully aligned integration between IT teams and business strategy and 15 per cent said they had no visibility for IT projects at board level.

As an example of this, almost half (48 per cent) of respondents said that IT performance monitoring is not seen as a priority, with 20 per cent saying it is considered an ‘afterthought’. Furthermore, 15 per cent said IT was seen as a ‘cost centre’, while eight per cent were unsure their IT teams were even monitoring the right things.

Mike Walton, chief executive and founder at Opsview, said: “The reason this is such a common issue is that many IT systems are a mess – to replace an entire IT ecosystem requires a huge amount of work, and few can afford the subsequent downtime while the upgrade is implemented.

“Plus, with the evident issue of legacy systems holding vital company information, ripping and replacing infrastructure is simply not possible,” he added. “Consequently, many are left with a fragmented IT infrastructure – with a patchwork of decentralised systems that stunts business performance and growth.”

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