IT leaders are responding to the skills shortage by automating repeatable work and outsourcing selected services to managed service providers (MSPs). The strategy is intended to release technicians for higher-value network improvement, security and training—not to prove that software or outsourcing eliminates the underlying talent gap. The most frequently cited figures come from Auvik’s 2024 survey of 2,100 internal IT professionals, summarized in a June 22, 2024 BetaNews article by Auvik CEO Doug Murray, so they should be read as survey findings rather than measurements of every IT department.
What the skills-gap evidence shows
Auvik’s 2024 findings describe a capacity problem: routine requests and manual administration consume time that could otherwise support modernization. BetaNews reports that:
- 64% of internal IT departments spent up to half of their working hours resolving end-user requests.
- 29% of network- and SaaS-related management tasks were still performed manually.
- 11% of IT professionals documented networks completely manually.
- 49% of IT executives identified shortages of skilled professionals as their biggest obstacle.
- 44% of professionals worked with at least 10 network-related tools, creating integration and training demands.
These results indicate overlapping pressures: too much repetitive work, fragmented tooling and too few experienced people. They do not establish that automation or outsourcing, by itself, causes staffing levels to rise or the gap to disappear.
Why automation is the first response
Automation can handle predictable, rules-based activity such as discovery, alert triage, routine reporting, ticket routing and portions of configuration work. Murray describes the objective as creating more time for IT through “strategic automation,” so teams can support the end users who drive organizational growth.
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The business case depends on more than buying a tool. Someone must define the workflow, set thresholds, integrate data, review exceptions and maintain the system as the environment changes. Automating a poorly designed process can reproduce errors faster or hide important conditions from technicians.
What automation can free up
- Recurring inventory and documentation updates.
- First-level monitoring and notification.
- Standardized checks for cloud, SaaS and Wi-Fi environments.
- Routine ticket classification and escalation.
What still requires people
- Architecture decisions and incident judgment.
- Security, access-control and compliance reviews.
- Change approval and recovery when automation fails.
- Vendor management, stakeholder communication and staff development.
Where MSP outsourcing fits
An MSP can supply monitoring, help-desk coverage, network operations or specialized expertise when an internal team cannot staff those functions economically. Outsourcing may extend coverage hours and provide access to skills that would be difficult to recruit.
It also transfers—rather than removes—management responsibilities. The customer still needs a clear scope, service-level objectives, data and privileged-access controls, escalation rules and an internal owner who can challenge the provider’s decisions. A contract that measures ticket volume alone may encourage fast closure instead of durable fixes.
Automation versus outsourcing: a practical decision test
| Question | Automation | MSP outsourcing |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | High-volume, repeatable work with stable rules | Work needing ongoing human coverage or scarce expertise |
| Internal capability required | Implementation, integration, governance and maintenance | Service-owner skills, procurement and vendor oversight |
| Primary risk | Incorrect rules, missed exceptions or tool sprawl | Loss of context, access-control exposure or unclear accountability |
| Visibility | Usually direct system data, subject to configuration quality | Depends on reporting, tooling and contract terms |
| Cost question | Whether labor saved exceeds licensing and maintenance | Whether the fee is lower than building and retaining equivalent capacity |
| Skills development | Can give staff time for deeper technical work if governed well | Can expose staff to specialist practice, but may also reduce hands-on learning |
The BetaNews article advocates both approaches but provides no comparative outcome data showing that one closes the skills gap better than the other. Leaders should therefore test each option against the work’s repeatability, operational risk, accountability and the capacity actually released.
What budgets and performance measures indicate
Auvik’s 2024 survey reported that 86% of IT teams expected budget increases, while 24% reported an increase in network-automation investment. Spending priorities included SaaS monitoring and management (48%), Wi-Fi management (46%) and cloud monitoring and management (46%). These are reported intentions and allocations for that survey period, not a guarantee that every team received funding.
The same survey ranked end-user satisfaction as the most important performance metric for 38% of respondents, followed by severity of incidents resolved (28%) and overall IT cost (27%). A balanced scorecard should pair those outcomes with measures such as time to restore service, change-failure rate, automation exception volume and hours returned to project or learning work.
The remote-work confidence gap
Tool effectiveness also depends on who is using it. Auvik reported high confidence in remote-work support among 58% of C-suite respondents, compared with 35% of IT professionals. The difference may reflect a visibility or day-to-day usability gap: executives assess business confidence, while technicians confront missing telemetry, disconnected tools and difficult workflows.
Nearly all professionals in the 2024 discussion reportedly used at least one AI or machine-learning tool. That statement is not directly comparable with Auvik’s later measure that only 5% said AI was core to operations; using a tool is a lower threshold than embedding AI in essential workflows.
Best Value
What newer 2026 findings add
Auvik’s official 2026 report page supplies newer, vendor-published figures. They should not be silently substituted for the 2024 survey:
- 44% said lack of real-time visibility impeded their work.
- 48% of corporate IT respondents cited lack of time as a primary blocker, and 33% cited insufficient IT staff.
- 67% were optimistic about AI, but only 5% said it was core to operations.
- 13% reported no new initiatives despite increased budgets.
- 36% of MSPs used 10 or more tools.
- 61% discovered unauthorized SaaS applications at least monthly, including 23% who found them weekly.
- Mostly in-office arrangements rose to 51%, while mostly remote work fell to 23%; balanced 50/50 hybrid work fell from 40% in 2024 to 25% in 2026.
The page’s statement that time and staffing, rather than budget alone, are the primary blockers is a vendor report-page conclusion. The figures reinforce the capacity and visibility problem but do not independently prove a causal effect or provide full survey methodology.
A safer implementation sequence for IT leaders
- Baseline the work. Measure request volume, recurring task hours, incident severity, change failures and documentation effort before selecting a solution.
- Classify tasks by risk. Start with reversible, well-understood work; keep human approval for security-sensitive or high-impact changes.
- Reduce tool overlap. Map discovery, inventory, monitoring, configuration and troubleshooting coverage before adding another console.
- Pilot with explicit controls. Define owners, access rights, rollback procedures, exception queues and success thresholds.
- Decide what to outsource. Specify scope, service levels, escalation paths, data handling and exit rights; retain an informed internal service owner.
- Reinvest released capacity. Allocate documented time to architecture, resilience, security and training rather than assuming it will appear automatically.
- Review outcomes quarterly. Check whether user satisfaction, restoration time, cost and staff capability improved without increasing hidden risk.
How to evaluate a network-management platform
Whether a product is used by an internal team or an MSP, evaluate the complete operating model rather than a feature count:
- Discovery, inventory and topology mapping across the actual environment.
- Monitoring, alert quality and troubleshooting workflow.
- Configuration management, auditability and rollback.
- Cloud, SaaS, Wi-Fi and security integrations.
- Role-based access, tenant separation and data retention.
- Deployment effort, ongoing administration and support model.
- Fit for one organization versus multi-client MSP operations.
Auvik positions its network-management capabilities for internal IT and MSP use, but the available material does not independently establish a best vendor or compare outcomes across products. Any commercial relationship or referral should be disclosed and checked against current program terms.
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The Bottom Line
Automation and MSP outsourcing are practical capacity responses to the IT skills shortage. They work best when leaders automate predictable work, outsource clearly bounded services, preserve accountability and use the time recovered to build the expertise the organization still needs.
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