September 18th is National IT Professionals Day, a day focused on recognizing the challenges IT professionals face on a daily basis, and a chance to show appreciation for the professionals that play a vital role in keeping today's businesses functioning smoothly.

To help celebrate, top experts from leading technology companies have analyzed how the role of the IT pro has changed, challenges IT pros face, and provided tips for business leaders on how to make the most of IT during this age of digital transformation.

Neil Barton, CTO, WhereScape

"IT is critical to an organization's ability to compete in our fast paced, tech-centered world. Every day IT professionals face the daunting task of ensuring IT infrastructure is primed and ready to deliver crucial and timely business insight. As companies require more frequent updates to their data infrastructure to match business needs and capitalize on emerging technologies, the role and organizational impact of the IT professional continues to expand.

That's why IT professionals must leverage tools such as data infrastructure automation to ensure the solutions they design, develop, deploy and operate will offer the fastest time to value possible. By eliminating the unnecessary hand-coding traditionally associated with data infrastructure projects for example, IT professionals can save time, lower costs and limit project risk - and in the process increase their own bandwidth and contributions to the business."

Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Technology Evangelist, Zerto

"IT professionals are under tremendous pressure to ensure that business technology services are protected and available 24/7, regardless of the level of risk. They are charged with maintaining IT resilience in the wake of any disruption. This can be a daunting task, which was reinforced in a recent survey where 93% of IT professionals said their business have experienced a tech-related disruption in the last two years. Following these disruptions, organisations reported that in around half of the cases, employees had to work overtime (53% of occasions) and there was a loss of productivity (50% of such instances). This IT Professionals Day the best thing an organisation can do to support its IT pros is to invest in the right tools to help them combat downtime and enable resilience. This means tools that are multi-purpose, easy to use, integrate simply, work across clouds and on-premises, and are constantly fuelled by innovation to meet ever evolving needs. Tools like this are critical to ensure IT professionals can focus on IT transformation, and not have to burn the midnight oil recovering from downtime that could have been prevented."

Stephen Gailey, Solutions Architect, Exabeam

"No challenge is higher up the enterprise IT agenda than security. The IT Pros tasked with ensuring security in a modern enterprise require a Sherlock Holmes-esque persona - sifting through a slew of false positives and negatives that are part and parcel of the modern security environment. Security alerts are constantly being generated and the vast majority are little more than distractions and red herrings. It's the IT Pro's job to identify the real threats.

Each time a device or user interacts with a corporate network, the activity is logged. Thousands of logs are created every day and some are much more dangerous than others. To the untrained eye, each individual log may seem fine. As the Consulting Detective once said, there is a clear distinction between seeing and observing. It's only when all of this activity is linked together that the real picture begins to emerge.

It takes a truly skilled eye and the latest technology to detect a real threat as it forms amidst the clouds of uncertainty. In today's business environment, IT Pros have their work cut out. They know there are hundreds of adversaries out there, but with so many distractions, spotting the real threats takes skill: "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance observes."

Gary Watson, CTO and Founder, Nexsan

"IT professionals are crucial when it comes to innovation and technology, but their importance is often overlooked. For many of us we only encounter their services when IT is going wrong, but the reality is that every day they work fiercely to protect infrastructure, keep services running, and drive forwards with new and efficient ways to work.

In today's technology-driven age, IT professionals are faced with increasing pressure, and with supporting technology that can help make their lives easier, such as secure storage, easier management and high performance, they can focus their time elsewhere. IT professionals need the correct tools in place in order to keep operations running smoothly, and forward-thinking organisations that take the time to rethink their infrastructure and support IT professionals with their daily role stand in better stead to deal with new IT challenges."

Alan Conboy, Office of the CTO, Scale Computing

"There are many functions within a business whose value can fall under the radar, and this is particularly true of the IT professional. Whether it's the IT team or a solo expert, each IT professional spends their day working tirelessly to protect their organisation from downtime, server failures, upgrade issues and capacity problems to name a few. Their role means the rest of the organisation doesn't even need to think about the business IT infrastructure at all. But, we are all guilty of not always remembering to thank the IT team for the work they do, and instead, more often than not, only recognising them when a problem arises. So today, on IT Professional's Day, we should all take the time to appreciate the IT professionals around us, and thank them for the time they spend making sure our working day is not impacted by IT challenges."

Todd Krautkremer, CMO at Cradlepoint

"The IT Pro's role is ever-changing, but over the last few years, they have been responsible for enabling huge transformation in the technology domains that comprise modern IT organisations. In today's hyper-connected enterprise, IT Pros are often responsible for managing a network which extends well beyond the traditional fixed location boundaries and across the public Internet - connecting everything from vehicles, kiosks, sensors, cameras, and digital signage.

This expanded scope of connecting people, places and things everywhere means that 4G LTE, and soon 5G, has become an essential wide-area network (WAN) infrastructure. To enable more agility, especially for lean IT shops, they are also harnessing the power of Software-defined Networking (SDN) to accelerate provisioning times, increase availability, and create a more intelligent and self-optimising network edge that seamlessly blends wired and wireless connections.

Just around the corner, IT Pros will have another tool in their toolbox - 5G, which promises to deliver gigabit speeds, low latencies, and low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. 5G will enable a new generation of business applications poised to transform workforce productivity and customer experiences by leveraging virtual and augmented reality, remote-controlled robotics, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

IT Pros have always been unsung heroes, but with such significant technology developments on the horizon, it's time we start singing their praises."

Scott Parker, Director of Product Marketing, Sinequa

"Sinequa regularly witnesses IT professionals accomplishing heroic tasks despite the immense cognitive burden they often face in their profession. By "cognitive burden" I am referring to the extra thought and effort required to evaluate unclear options and make optimal decisions. In other words, when we load our minds with confusing choices and ambiguous terminology, we impose a cognitive burden. It's important to alleviate the cognitive burden for IT professionals, to the extent made possible by modern technology. In honor of National IT Professionals Day, we salute IT professionals across the country for their focus and dedication to the mission of their respective organizations."

Derrin Rummelt, Director of Cloud Engineering, US Signal

"From migrating your IT infrastructure to a new environment to implementing a comprehensive IT resilience strategy, IT professionals are behind the scenes, ensuring that networks are secure, up-to-date and efficient. In the modern world, it is clear that IT is increasingly essential to businesses in just about every industry. On National IT Professionals Day, it's important to take a moment to thank technology professionals for their hard work, dedication and commitment to keeping the technology and IT infrastructure powering businesses running smoothly."

Eric Sheridan, Chief Scientist, WhiteHat Security

"On National IT Professionals Day, it's important to thank IT professionals for their impact on the technology industry and innovations throughout the modern world. Job fatigue and stress can unfortunately be a common aspect of daily life for IT professionals, especially within the security industry where the pace of global cybercrime continues to grow and the demand is outpacing the supply of IT professionals, specifically in security, who can help combat the ever-increasing threats.

Many IT professionals desire to have a real impact on the world, becoming emotionally invested in their jobs, which consequently adds to stress levels. As a result, burnout is a real phenomenon among IT professionals, especially in security and software development. IT professionals can combat this dilemma and achieve a work-life balance through a variety of strategies:

1. Food, Exercise, Sleep - Carve out times in the day to nourish the body, as well as the brain, with exercise, enough sleep and a healthy diet. It's unrealistic to be productive throughout the day, without resting or eating healthy foods.

2. Collaborate and Delegate - It's easy to get burnt out when you are acting as the sole point of contact on a project. Teams are there for a reason, so collaborate and delegate items among other team members.

3. New Hobbies - Spending all day coding, and then going home and coding for personal enjoyment can turn into burnout quickly. Spend less time coding recreationally, and instead focus on new hobbies that can encourage creativity."

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