The main obstacles to resilience are not a lack of tools, but deeper organizational causes
Despite massive investments in digital tools, companies are still struggling to build truly operational IT resilience. According to SolarWinds, fragility prevails in the absence of agility.
89% of IT leaders in the EMEA region consider their organization to be resilient. However, only 34% describe themselves as highly resilient. This indicates that this confidence does not necessarily reflect real-time operational readiness. This is the first finding of the study “Fragile to Agile: The State of Operational Resilience,” recently published by Solar Winds after surveying more than 200 IT professionals in the EMEA region. While confidence in operational resilience is growing, daily challenges continue to consume significant resources.
The report also found that 45% of IT leaders in the EMEA region still spend a quarter of their working week resolving critical issues and service disruptions. This highlights a gap between perceived resilience and operational reality.
In addition, 35% of respondents identified cumbersome processes, not technology, as the main obstacle to improving resilience. One in two blamed outdated processes for disruptions.
Barriers to operational resilience
“When faced with IT issues and disruptions, the urgency can drive companies to resort to tactical technology solutions, such as new tools,” observes RJ Gazarek, Product Marketing Leader, SolarWinds. However, as this report suggests, technology without an overall strategy will not deliver the desired results. Organizations need to consider their users, their expertise, and how they plan to leverage the tools available to them.”
Rather than pointing to a lack of appropriate technology as the main factor, respondents cited work flow issues and team building as key factors in inadequate problem prevention and mitigation.
A sign of maturity
Many organizations also fail to track critical metrics such as mean time to detect, mean time to recognize, and mean time to resolve (MTTX). Of those that do, most cite tools (73%), workflow (67%), and team structure (44%) as major performance factors.
The 2025 SolarWinds report reminds us that IT resilience can no longer be treated as an add-on for robustness. It is now a strategic component in its own right, structured around tangible areas: flow visibility, skills mobilization, indicator governance, and tool suitability. In this sense, it becomes a indicator of organizational maturity.
The challenge is not only to respond better to incidents, but to learn to anticipate them, absorb them, and leverage them for continuous improvement. Resilience is no longer a defensive posture; it is becoming a dynamic capability. Hence the importance of agility.