IT organizations want a unified IT experience, but many lack money and resources, which presents roadblocks to reaching that goal.

That’s according to a new survey by Ivanti on the challenges and benefits of taking a unified approach to IT management. Ivanti surveyed more than 1,300 IT professionals.

Vendor management and contract negotiation are time-consuming for IT professionals. Half of them work with 11 or more different vendors.

Also, nearly half spend weeks or months renegotiating vendor contracts each year.

Unified IT is a unified experience across endpoint management, security and enterprise service management.

Mareike Fondufe is a technology evangelist for Ivanti. She said many organizations are in “firefighting mode.” They are dealing with pressing security, issue-resolution time and IT reporting issues.

Ivanti’s Mareike Fondufe

“Unifying their IT approach can help them achieve their objectives. But there is often no time, budget or expertise to do it and reap the benefits,” she said. “The channel is a key part of this transition, helping organizations achieve their objective of unified IT — from building the business case, to defining the new processes, to looking at the required architecture to tool implementation, and reporting provides opportunities for the channel.”

The channel has better insights into the benefits their customers want to realize as they plan and implement unified IT with their partners, Fondufe said.

Unified IT Can Help

Extended contract negotiations show IT organizations have a lot on their plate. They are using spreadsheets to track their IT infrastructure, and lack consistent data across their systems and IT departments.

“Unified IT can assist with bringing together data from multiple sources, providing real-time insights into the IT estate and smart recommendations, and eventually automated actions to proactively resolve common issues for users,” Fondufe said.

Survey-takers identified the top benefits of unified IT. One is consistent data across systems and IT departments. Others are improved user experience; ease of use; consistent and aligned processes across IT departments; and cost savings.

“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, don’t expect different results,” Fondufe said. “There is a need for a more unified IT experience to help IT pros do their jobs more efficiently, and help them to better manage and secure their workplaces, especially with increasing demands (remote workforce, anytime, anywhere access, proliferation of devices and types, etc.”

Today’s IT organizations try to balance a number of initiatives. Those include improved patching and security; shorter incident resolution time; improved IT reporting; unified IT; and IT governance.

“Conflicting initiatives are competing for IT budgets, and complicating visibility and reporting processes,” said Duane Newman, Ivanti’s vice president of product management. “By taking a unified approach to the priorities of security, issue resolution and reporting, IT organizations will likely find that they are better able to achieve their highest priorities without added cost or effort.”