60% declare themselves unfazed or optimistic

Chessington, 2 April 2009. The vast majority of IT professionals are displaying a positive attitude in the face of the increased uncertainty brought about by the recession, a recent survey by service management company Sunrise Software revealed.

The research, which targeted private and public sectors, showed that 40% of IT managers and staff are resolutely optimistic and won’t give in to the ambient negativism. 20% said that they were not letting it affect them at all, and 33.5% said that, although they felt the pressure on them had increased, they were able to take this in their stride. Only 6.5% said they were losing sleep over the increased uncertainty.

If attitudes remained upbeat, the challenges facing IT were clearly laid out: 31% of those questioned had seen redundancies in their IT department, and just under half (47%) had made budget cuts.

So what kind of action are IT professionals taking to deal with the situation? 69% say they are working smarter in order to do more with less – and outlined different ways in which they were achieving this – among them:

• Using technology to increase automation (65%)
• Focusing more on educating their customers (51%)
• Implementing ITIL based processes to save costs (38%), ahead of outsourcing which only 28% selected as an effective method of saving costs.

Sunrise has published a full report on its website going into further detail on how these strategies and others were being deployed, including IT’s approach to ITIL and ISO/IEC accreditations.

Sunrise Chairman Tom Weston commented: “It’s encouraging to see that IT is setting an example in level-headedness. The danger with the current doom and gloom is that people can be made to feel powerless, but there’s a lot that can be said for remaining positive and taking proactive steps to improve your business.”

*Survey conducted online throughout March 2009. 66% of the 175 respondents came from the private sector and 34% from the public sector.