In response, many have made incremental adjustments, implementing new tools, refining individual processes, or shifting workforce strategies. Despite these efforts, inefficiencies persist. The problem isn’t isolated failures—it’s a disconnect between the parts and the whole.
What Causes Siloes and Fragmentation?
Businesses rely on many tools, platforms, and systems to manage their operations. While these technologies are intended to provide clarity, they often have the opposite effect—fragmentation. Data and workflows become siloed, making it difficult for IT pros to get a complete picture of the environment. Many organizations rely on legacy systems and non-integrated solutions, which require manual coordination across multiple platforms.
On average, organizations use 11 different monitoring tools, yet research by SolarWinds and ESG found that 52% still lack full-stack observability, leaving them missing critical performance issues. Hybrid IT environments amplify this disconnect, where applications run across on-premises infrastructure, cloud platforms, and edge locations, each requiring its specialized tools. Cross-functional collaboration and decision-making become difficult as businesses struggle to gain a unified view.
The Hidden Cost of Disconnection
When systems, teams, and workflows don’t connect, businesses face real operational challenges:
- Frequent outages and downtime: According to a 2022 report from the Uptime Institute, human error has caused nearly 40% of all significant incidents over the previous three years. Downtime can cost businesses anywhere from thousands to millions per hour, with 44% of organizations reporting hourly losses exceeding $1 million.
- Slow incident resolution: Disconnected telemetry and poor visibility extend the time it takes to diagnose and resolve issues, increasing mean time to resolution (MTTR) and violating service-level agreements (SLAs).
- Lost revenue and customer trust: IT disruptions impact productivity and can erode brand reputation. Customers expect seamless experiences, and repeated outages or inefficiencies reduce trust, which can lead to lost business and damaged long-term relationships.
- Inefficient workflows and wasted effort: Isolated teams using different tools and datasets lead to redundant work, slower decision-making, and missed opportunities.
- Reactive rather than proactive management: Without a unified, system-wide view, businesses spend more time addressing issues as they arise rather than proactively preventing them.
Disconnected systems force teams into a constant firefighting mode, where innovation and strategic thinking become impossible.
The Path to Operational Resilience
Unless businesses take a system-thinking view of the organization, they risk further inefficiencies, disruptions, and stunted growth. The key to overcoming these challenges isn’t simply adopting more technology—it’s ensuring that technology, processes, and people work as a coherent system rather than isolated parts. Here are some simple steps to achieve alignment in your organization.
This is just an overview of the steps leaders can take to create a more coherent organizational environment. For a granular analysis of how you can achieve operational resilience, learn more about how SolarWinds brings IT all together.
