Holiday Downtime Elusive For IT Pros

Many workers look forward to some rest and relaxation during the holidays, but for IT pros, this time of year doesn't bring much relief from their high-stress jobs. According to a survey released by Ipswitch, IT pros won't exactly be reveling in holiday bliss.

Ipswitch, a provider of network and server monitoring tools, polled 206 IT pros in the US and found that 49% will either be on call or working this holiday season. For example, 26% said they'll be working Christmas Eve. Sounds like an Ebenezer Scrooge-Bob Cratchit scenario.

Lot of stuff will keep network managers and sysadmins busy when everyone else is enjoying egg nog and exchanging gifts. There are the common problems like users complaining that they can't access the network remotely, and then there are the really big, catastrophic problems like network outages (33% of those surveyed said they'd experienced one during a company holiday).

Even if they do manage to escape the office during the holidays, 48% of IT pros are thinking about work, the survey showed. Here's a snapshot of the Ipswitch survey results.

Figure 1: