This year, COVID-19 has brought many challenges for IT Pros. They've worked countless hours to keep those on the frontlines in communication, and effectively able to serve those in desperate need of help. When hospitals were flooded with cases, IT pros helped keep the lights on. When many companies and organizations shifted to a more fully-remote work environment, IT pros helped ensure the transition was able to take place, keeping the company's-and their end-users' data- secured, protected, and enabled companies to continue operations. 

In celebration of IT Pro Day, six tech industry leaders have given their greatest thanks and appreciation to these hardworking individuals:

Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Director Technical Marketing, Zerto

"IT Pro Day comes at a poignant time this year, against the backdrop of a world that has changed dramatically in just 6 months. This has brought new and challenging digital environments and with it, greater cybersecurity risks. All organizations, big and small, are now realizing they must prioritize both protection and availability - 24/7/365 - regardless of their perceived level of risk. 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. A huge task, but perhaps even bigger now as many of our IT professionals are doing this job remotely while supporting a growing remote workforce.

The best thing a company can do this year to support IT pros is to invest in tools that can help them enable IT resilience - combatting downtime once and for all. Ultimately, IT pros need 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. This is critical to ensuring IT pros can focus on adding value - ensuring IT is running smoothly, rather than spending precious time recovering from downtime that could have been prevented."

Richard Hanmaker, HR business partner, Leaseweb Global

"We must applaud our IT pros for exhibiting such strong resilience throughout the constant changes 2020 has brought. With the transition to remote work in the wake of COVID-19, many IT pros have had to adapt their day-to-day while working under atypical conditions. Throughout the entire pandemic, IT pros have committed to never stop learning. IT pros around the world have learned with each curveball and thus constantly further developing their knowledge and expertise. This commitment to learning, adapting and evolving has allowed them to continue adding immeasurable value for both end-users and customers alike. As we begin looking toward what comes next, I encourage IT pros to stay curious. Having curious and adaptable team members enables an organization to themselves be adaptable: to challenge an idea, to improve it. These are all mission-critical capabilities in our current economic climate." 

Carl D'Halluin, CTO, Datadobi

"The IT department is an organization's team of modern-day superheroes. In the face of a disaster such as a cyberattack, insider threat, storage platform specific hack or bug, or natural disaster that disrupts power or network connectivity, it is up to the IT pros to come in and ‘save the day' to ensure business continuity. 

On this year's IT Pro Day, it is important for businesses to equip their crusaders with the right tools to combat downtime. Downtime can cost an organization roughly $300,000 per hour or $5,600 per minute - which doesn't include the added impact of reputation damage or loss of customers. By identifying what we call a ‘golden copy' of mission-critical data and keeping it in a well-protected bunker either on or off-premise or in the cloud, IT pros can rest assured that in the event of an emergency, business operations can continue. The ‘golden copy' complements data protection plans and allows IT pros to focus on delivering more value to the businesses they serve - further elevating their superhero status."

Craig Fulton, Chief Customer Officer, ConnectWise

"The hard work of IT professionals should be recognized each and every day, but they certainly deserve one all their own. From system administrators to network engineers, IT support technicians are crucial to business success and lead the charge for technology innovation. Companies need technology to operate efficiently, be productive, and compete.  IT Professionals ensure that the technology is there to keep companies running, productive and to drive them into the future.

As organizations across industries continue to operate remotely, the support and dedication of IT professionals help to keep businesses safe during this critical time and beyond. IT professionals have become more important as the workforce has seen a 35% increase in IT incident tickets per day. In addition to acting as the backbone of the organization, IT professionals focus their time on protecting businesses from security attacks, troubleshooting and saving the company from productivity-killing downtime. Initiatives like IT Pro Day allow us to celebrate the vital role of IT professionals and acknowledge the many ways they help organizations achieve their full potential."

Mihir Shah, CEO, StorCentric 

"IT professionals can sometimes be overlooked, despite just how vital their presence is. This may be due to the fact that the only encounter most people have with them is when IT has gone wrong. What most people forget is that these IT professionals are the backbone of virtually every successful organization and work tirelessly to ensure infrastructure is protected, services are kept running, and their end users are provided with efficient ways to work. 

In today's pandemic era, remote work has become the norm. With this, IT professionals have had to become extra vigilant as ransomware has also spread viciously. Unfortunately, backups have become the latest malware target, as evolving and more sophisticated ransomware attacks now not only seek to attack onsite production data, but every possible copy, wherever the copies reside. Ransomware continues to be the biggest threat facing organizations today. IT departments must incorporate a secure solution into their existing infrastructure such as Unbreakable Backup, which protects backups in the event of a ransomware attack and mitigates data loss and downtime. For this reason, and countless others, we at StorCentric wish to honor and celebrate hard working IT professionals, not only this IT Pro Day, but everyday."

Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i

"This year, the immeasurable impact and value IT pros provide every day, across virtually every industry, took center stage as much of the world's population was forced to head home to work, learn, and live. The ability to connect and communicate virtually, as well as access and share data became not only business-critical, but also crucial for education and day-to-day living.
 
Unfortunately, during this pandemic era it also became abundantly clear that while working and learning from home offers health and safety benefits, when it comes to data safety, it's a much different story. While some IT pros pursued (or got stuck with) conventional approaches like virtual private networks (VPNs), others chose more up-to-date technology like software-defined perimeter (SDP) solutions. These savvy folks knew that SDP is able to make VPN issues - such as inadvertently opening the whole network to hackers who can now move laterally across the entirety of connected systems to steal and corrupt data - disappear.
 
So, my advice? Come September 15, as well as all year round, take time out of your busy day to thank your local IT pro. It is likely whether you know it or not, that among the plethora of initiatives they executed to ensure your working and/or learning success, they also made sure that when they opened the door for you to access internal networks, they also slammed the door on cybercriminals."