The 17th of September marks IT Professionals Day, a day focused on recognizing the challenges IT professionals regularly face in keeping businesses running smoothly. 

To honor the occasion, a variety of IT gurus have joined together to share appreciation for these professionals, commenting on how the role of the IT professional has changed, the skills the modern IT pro needs, and how businesses can support them in gaining these as well as tips for business leaders on how to make the most of IT during this age of digital transformation.

Stephen Gailey, Head of Solutions Architecture at Exabeam

"The IT Pros tasked with ensuring security in a modern enterprise are faced with huge challenges every day.  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 insignificant.  As Sherlock Holmes 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.  This is why IT Pros deserve to be fully appreciated on days like today - and every other day of the year."

Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Technology Evangelist at Zerto

"Regardless of the level of risk, organizations need to be protected and available 24/7/365. This can put enormous pressure on IT professionals, whose responsibility it is to ensure the business maintains IT resilience in the wake of any disruption. This can be a huge task, as highlighted in a recent survey in which 91% of IT professionals said their business experienced a tech-related disruption over the last two years. 

The best thing a company can do this IT Professionals' Day to support the IT Pros that keep things running, is to invest in tools that can help them enable resilience - combating downtime once and for all. Essentially, this means tools that are easy and simple to use, multi-purpose, work across all types of infrastructure, and are ready to adapt to the ever evolving innovation needs of an organization. It's tools like this that are critical when it comes to IT Pros being able to focus on ensuring the IT is running smoothly, rather than spending their precious time recovering from downtime that could have been prevented."

Craig Fulton, Chief Customer Officer at ConnectWise

"Not a day goes by that businesses and customers don't benefit from the hard work of IT professionals.  From system administrators to network engineers, IT support technicians and many more, each and every one of them plays a vital role in leading the charge for technology innovation and business success.  

In addition to acting as the backbone of an organization, IT professionals spend their time troubleshooting, and protecting businesses from security breaches and productivity-killing downtime.  That's why initiatives like IT Pro Day give us a chance to hail them as the true heroes of technology, helping organizations achieve their full potential."

Craig Hinkley, CEO at WhiteHat Security 

"As the pace of cybercrime continues to grow, demand is outpacing the supply of security professionals who can help combat the ever-increasing threats. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the total of unfilled security jobs will reach 3.5 million by 2021.

With these global staffing shortages, some departments may only have 10 staffers when the number to adequately do their jobs should really be teams of 15 or 20, directly leading to increased stress levels. 

These skill shortages represent a widespread threat to the security of all of us. Not having enough trained workers for the organizations that we trust to protect our data leaves us all vulnerable in one way or another. Furthermore, the organizations that are adequately equipped with enough cybersecurity professionals tend to still be overworked, highly stressed, and prone to burnout. 

On IT Professionals Day, please join me in helping bring attention to this serious matter. Whether you are a CEO of a leading organization, or simply a friend or family member of someone who works in the industry, spread the word about this problem. The safety of our digital lives is at stake, and we need to all do our part in raising awareness of these issues. If you or someone you know needs help, contact ADAA, a nonprofit national organization committed to the prevention, treatment, and cure of anxiety and mood disorders."

Bob Davis, CMO at Plutora

"There's no getting around the fact that software is now fundamental to success in business today. It's so ingrained in operational functions that every organization is now a software organization and has to be run as such. This puts great value on the IT pros that ensure their companies keep pace with the constantly changing world of IT. 

We also know that IT professionals provide more than smooth operations and well-oiled software-they impact the bottom line. When done right, IT pros choose, build and manage the software that can allow organizations to intuitively address the needs of customers. Business in today's climate moves at light speed, and customers demand instant gratification that must be satisfied in days and hours, not months. This means your organization's technology must be able to react to the customer's needs and provide solutions at a pace that makes your customer more successful. This focus requires strong IT teams and the expertise they provide to stay ahead. This role within organizations will become more and more essential in the years ahead, and with the value that skilled IT professionals provide, organizations will be able to embrace change, identify value and create processes that deliver success."

Neil Barton, CTO at WhereScape

"IT professionals are on the front line every day ensuring the company's data infrastructure is armed and ready to deliver critical and prompt business insights. On top of this, the role of the IT professional itself is continually evolving and expanding given emerging technologies and changing organizational needs. 

Data infrastructure automation arms IT with not only the tools needed to design, develop, deploy and operate data warehousing projects with the fastest time to value possible, but also provides the ability to offload the repetitive and mundane hand-coding required with traditional development approaches. Giving IT back additional time, through automation, provides IT professionals more opportunity to both stay current with evolving technologies and be more strategic in serving the business."

Todd Krautkremer, CMO at Cradlepoint

"The impacts of cloud, mobile, IoT, and big data have re-scoped the IT professional's role quite significantly over the last several years, and there is little sign of this abating. These same disruptive technologies are now starting to redefine the wide-area network (WAN), requiring it to be more agile, automated and reliable than ever before, while extending beyond the branch and beyond where wired connections can go. 

Driven in part by the advent of 5G, the rise of the wireless WAN is the next big thing that IT pros are embracing to support business imperatives. Numerous reports, including Cradlepoint's own market surveys, have shown that the folks in the corner offices are becoming enamored with 5G and the bevy of new business applications that it enables - and it's easy to see why. 5G promises a wireless WAN that can be deployed instantly, delivers multi-gigabit performance with single-digit latencies, can be "sliced" into multiple virtual networks to support different types of business traffic, and provides in-the-packet-path cloud computing at the carrier edge.

What every grizzled IT veteran knows from experience is that the marvels of 5G won't happen overnight. However, 5G deployments are starting to happen now. So on this day where we pay homage to IT pros everywhere, the one piece of advice I can offer as a former network engineer myself, is to develop a "Pathway to 5G". Start to leverage the advanced capabilities of today's 4G LTE and ensure that your WAN is 5G-ready for when and where the service becomes available. The wireless WAN wave is coming fast, and being prepared will make you a hero in the corner offices."

Derrin Rummelt, Director of Cloud Engineering at US Signal

"IT professionals are behind the curtain, ensuring that the show goes on. They ensure that networks are secure, up-to-date and efficient and play a vital role in everything from migrating your IT infrastructure to a new environment to implementing a comprehensive IT resilience strategy. It is becoming more apparent that IT is essential for all industries in the modern world. Therefore, National IT Professionals Day is a great opportunity 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."

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