IT teams wary as automation races ahead, SolarWinds says

SolarWinds has released survey findings showing that 35% of IT professionals expect IT operations to become primarily or almost entirely automated within the next two to three years. The data is based on responses from 1,048 IT professionals worldwide.

The research highlights a gap between the pace of AI adoption and many IT teams' confidence in the systems being introduced around them. As organisations move towards more automated workflows, respondents reported concerns about accuracy, oversight, and the effect on their day-to-day work.

Nearly half of those surveyed, 46%, were concerned about the quality or accuracy of AI. Another 29% were worried about disruption to their role, suggesting the concerns extend beyond technical reliability to how work itself may change.

Pressure on IT staff also emerged as a theme, with the majority of workers across all roles reporting that AI had made their jobs more demanding. For many teams, automation is not yet reducing workload in a straightforward way.

Barriers remain

Data privacy and security concerns were identified as the biggest barrier to wider adoption, cited by 43% of respondents. Platform fragmentation followed at 28%, while 17% pointed to a lack of clear human guardrails.

The findings suggest that practical governance issues remain central to AI adoption in IT operations. Respondents pointed not only to technology limitations, but also to organisational questions around policy, responsibility, and control.

More than half, 56%, said clearer AI policies and guardrails would help their organisations adapt to the shift. Half also said formal training was needed, showing that demand for support is focused on both rules and skills.

That combination suggests many IT teams want stronger structures around deployment rather than simply more automation tools. It also indicates employers may be rolling out AI-assisted systems before some staff feel adequately prepared to manage them.

Adoption debate

The results reflect a broader debate in corporate technology over whether AI is changing operations faster than governance can keep pace. In IT departments, where uptime, security, and accountability are core responsibilities, caution over accuracy and oversight can have direct operational consequences.

For vendors and employers alike, the data points to a challenge in balancing pressure to automate with the operational realities faced by internal teams. Greater automation may be seen as inevitable by many respondents, but the survey indicates acceptance of the trend is far from unconditional.

SolarWinds presented the findings as evidence that organisations need to pay closer attention to how AI is introduced into operational settings. The results covered AI adoption, role evolution, operational complexity, and the outlook for IT organisations.

That around a third of respondents expect mostly automated IT operations within two to three years is a notable sign of how quickly expectations are shifting. At the same time, the broader picture is less about enthusiasm than the terms under which automation is being accepted.

Those terms appear to include clearer accountability, more formal preparation, and stronger safeguards around the use of AI in environments where errors can affect business continuity. The figures also underline that concern about automation is not limited to job displacement, but includes trust in outputs and the burden of supervising systems that may still require close human review.

SolarWinds Chief Product Officer Cullen Childress commented on the survey findings.

"Across industries, AI adoption has been uneven. There's a clear push to secure growth with innovation, and AI is being positioned as the accelerator. But speed alone can create more friction than progress and many IT teams are being stretched between innovation and accountability. Success will come from organisations that treat AI as an operational discipline built on visibility, control, and shared ownership - not just a fast-moving experiment," said Cullen Childress, Chief Product Officer, SolarWinds.