IT teams spend 53% of time on endpoint maintenance

Splashtop has published research showing that endpoint maintenance takes up more than half of IT team capacity, based on a survey of 250 IT professionals and managed service providers in the United States.

The study found that endpoint maintenance accounted for an average of 53% of team time, rising to 61% in organisations with more than 1,000 endpoints. It also estimated that reactive endpoint operations cost teams an average of USD $133,000 a year in maintenance labour alone.

Among respondents, 72% said fragmented tools, partial automation and limited visibility were preventing them from achieving the operational gains they expected. The survey also found that 57% had experienced a security incident linked to patching delays, while more than half reported effects on cyber insurance.

The findings point to persistent pressure on IT departments and managed service providers as endpoint estates grow and become harder to oversee. According to the research, respondents using three or more tools for each endpoint issue were more than 60% likely to face frequent rework.

Reactive burden

Much of the strain described in the survey centred on routine maintenance, patching and troubleshooting across disconnected systems. Many teams had already invested in automation and endpoint management tools, but remained in partly modernised environments where day-to-day work was still heavily reactive.

As a result, teams are spending time on emergency patching and repeated checks across different systems instead of shifting more work into automated processes. The report describes a gap between organisations still operating through fragmented workflows and those using more unified endpoint management approaches.

Mark Lee, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Splashtop, linked the findings to the limits of automation when core operations remain disconnected.

"As automation and AI agents become more common across IT operations, many teams are discovering that isolated automation can only go so far when the underlying operational model remains fragmented. This is driving the need for more unified operational models and shaping how we think about simplifying endpoint operations," Lee said.

Patching delays

The company also highlighted the practical difficulty of responding when new software vulnerabilities are disclosed. That work often begins with determining whether an organisation is affected, before identifying devices, software and ownership across different systems.

Brandon Shopp, Vice President of Product at Splashtop, said the process often becomes more cumbersome in distributed IT environments.

"What stands out in the research is how much effort IT teams are spending coordinating work across multiple systems. When a new vulnerability is disclosed, organizations first need to determine whether they're actually exposed. That sounds straightforward, but it often requires pulling information from multiple systems, identifying affected devices, understanding ownership, and validating what software is running where. As environments become more distributed, that process can take longer than teams would like, especially when visibility and remediation workflows aren't closely connected," Shopp said.

He added that many organisations were still devoting substantial time to repeat work caused by failed patching and troubleshooting that could be handled in the background.

"The goal of autonomous endpoint management is to remove repetitive work that prevents skilled IT teams from focusing on higher-value priorities. What we're hearing is that many organizations are still spending significant time on reactive maintenance and rework attributed to failed patching, or troubleshooting activities that should be happening in the background. Until those operational bottlenecks are addressed, autonomy will remain difficult to achieve at scale," Shopp said.

Wider strategy

The research sits alongside Splashtop's broader push into unified IT operations and endpoint management. Earlier this year, the company introduced a platform that brings together endpoint management, remote support, remote access and security workflows through a single console and agent.

That product direction reflects the survey's main theme: teams dealing with separate systems and incomplete automation face higher labour demands, slower patching and more operational rework. Splashtop argues that a more joined-up model can reduce the time IT staff spend coordinating between tools.

Shopp said organisations reporting the best efficiency gains were often those using a more integrated approach.

"The organizations seeing the greatest efficiencies tend to follow a more unified approach to operations. When endpoint management activities are more closely connected, teams can spend less time coordinating between systems and resolve issues quicker," Shopp said.