SolarWinds : Survey Investigates Barriers to New Technology Adoption in Federal Agencies

HERNDON, Virginia - April 23, 2015 - SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT performance management software, today released the results of its study on the current state of new technology adoption in government, revealing that although nearly all respondents (92%) indicated that adopting significant new technologies is important to their agencies' long-term success, significant barriers are still hindering progress.

"IT plays a vital role in today's federal agency operations, for everything from civilian-facing websites to military missions. But agencies can only progress and perform as quickly as IT and new technology enables them to," said Suaad Sait, executive vice president, products and markets, SolarWinds. "While technology adoption is a high priority in the public sector, offering more opportunity to streamline productivity and reduce cost, government IT organizations must ensure they are empowering IT pros to overcome barriers that they have traditionally faced in implementing and using that technology so they can see results right away."

While federal IT pros still face many barriers during procurement, deployment and implementation of new technology, over 90 percent of respondents said their agencies' end-users were negatively affected by performance or availability issues with mission-critical technology in the last year.

Budget Constraints, End-User Impact Identified as Top Barriers to Technology Adoption

• A majority (78%) of respondents cited budget limitations as their No. 1 barrier for IT adoption.

• Only 7 percent of respondents indicated that their agency and end-users were not affected at all during the last significant new technology implementation.
• Over half of the respondents also indicated that security/compliance concerns (55%), the need to continue supporting old, legacy technology (53%), and shortage of IT personnel (51%) were among their top barriers to adoption.
• Other top barriers include the inability to convince decision makers of need and/or benefit (47%) and lack of IT empowerment (37%).

CIO Involvement Falls Short; More Budget, Staff and Time Still Needed

Empowering IT departments to overcome barriers and drive the success of their agencies and end users through technology adoption often starts with the CIO. While respondents' perceptions of their CIOs are mostly positive, almost half of the respondents (47%) still need more or better resources such as budget, staff or time for projects.

• Most IT pros consider the CIO's primary role to be budget approvals (54%) and strategic council and guidance (47%), while only 38 percent noted that their CIO is involved in all areas of IT.
• However, respondents indicated that they still need more or better training and development (31%), greater IT department autonomy (30%), stronger CIO support when liaising with other agency leaders (24%), more or better strategic counsel and guidance from the CIO (24%), and more timely CIO approvals (24%).

*The annual SolarWinds IT Trends Report consists of survey-based research that explores trends, developments and movements related to and directly affecting IT and IT professionals. The findings of this year's report are based on a survey fielded in December 2014, which yielded responses from 123 IT practitioners, managers and directors in the U.S. and Canada from the public sector.

SolarWinds® Solutions for Government

• SolarWinds software is available on the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule, Department of Defense ESI, and other contract vehicles.
• U.S. Government certifications and approvals include Army CoN, Air Force APL, Navy DADMS; and Technical Requirements include FIPS compatibility, DISA STIGs, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliance and Common Criteria EAL 2 Certification, Section 508 VPATs.
• SolarWinds also has hundreds of built-in automated compliance reports, which meet requirements of all major auditing authorities, including DISA STIG, FISMA, NIST, and more.
• SolarWinds' thwack® online user community provides a number of out-of-the-box compliance report templates available to download for free that are designed to help users prepare for an inspection. thwack also provides information on Smart Card and Common Access Card (CAC) product support.

For more product and GSA pricing information and for a fully functional free trial of all above products, visit the SolarWinds Government Solutions page.

Additional Resources

• SolarWinds 2015 Federal Cybersecurity Survey
• Video: SolarWinds IT Management & Monitoring for Government

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500® enterprises to small businesses. In all of our market areas, our approach is consistent. We focus exclusively on IT Pros and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. SolarWinds delivers on this commitment with unexpected simplicity through products that are easy to find, buy, use and maintain while providing the power to address any IT management problem on any scale. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our thwack online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at http: http://www.solarwinds.com/.

SolarWinds, SolarWinds & Design and thwack are the exclusive property of SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC or its affiliates. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be or are intellectual property of their respective companies.

© 2015 SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. All rights reserved.

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