In today’s enterprise landscape, keeping track of company devices has evolved from a background task to a primary concern for IT and security teams. As the shift to hybrid work took hold, this change accelerated, pushing many organizations into new territory.
The flexibility of work-from-anywhere (WFA) models has not only forced business to become more adaptable, but it’s also added unprecedented layers of complexity to device management. Devices that once stayed neatly confined within office walls now span cities, countries, and continents. This shift forces IT teams to grapple with what they’ve come to call “endpoint sprawl.”
This explosion of endpoints has reshaped IT departments’ demands, shifting focus from traditional, firewall-centric security models to something that requires constant, real-time oversight of every device and network entry point.
For most organizations, rapid transformation wasn’t packaged with a proportional increase in resources or budget. Instead, IT departments must do more than ever—keeping up with rapid device proliferation, ensuring security and compliance, and managing increasingly diverse tools—all while budgets shrink. With endpoints multiplying across time zones and network perimeters, keeping track of every device, securing each entry point, and ensuring compliance feels like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube while it’s on fire.
For many, adopting a cloud-first, automation-driven approach to endpoint management is the only viable answer.
Managing Endpoint Sprawl: The New Frontier for IT
The era of managing corporate devices behind a firewall is over. Today, endpoint sprawl—the surge of internet-connected devices that IT must manage—is a top issue for any IT team supporting a hybrid workforce. The average employee frequently handles multiple devices, from laptops and smartphones to less obvious tools like tablets or IoT-powered systems. And they often do it with little to no support from vendors—with the industry’s response time to support claims averaging 12 hours or more.
Coupled with devices that continue to multiply and move, and the recent downturn in tech budgets, the challenge only intensifies. IT teams must do more with less, making automation and SaaS solutions essential as opposed to “nice to haves.”
“Legacy, on-prem tools are essentially dead,” says Sal Sferlazza, CEO and Co-founder of NinjaOne, which provides an automated endpoint management platform designed to help organizations streamline device management, simplify workflows, and improve security across distributed workforces.
Sferlazza explains that larger organizations still typically have legacy tools in place that use some form of hybrid on-prem solution. He believes a cloud-first approach is critical to handle and support a distributed workforce, while reducing the number of tools IT teams need to manage and the supporting infrastructure required to run them. The signal for this shift is incredibly strong.
For NinjaOne, on-prem solutions don’t cut it anymore. Endpoint management needs to be cloud-native and intuitive, offering a single window to visualize, maintain, and secure the entire fleet. Otherwise, IT teams risk being buried in inefficiencies.
Tool Consolidation and Automation: Finding Simplicity in a Complex World
Many IT teams feel the strain of managing an ever-growing lineup of tools. As companies have addressed new challenges over the years, they’ve gradually piled on more point solutions. This has led to a cluttered tech stack that often complicates workflows more than streamlines them, with overlapping functions and disconnected processes becoming the norm.
Consolidation isn’t just a trend; it’s a necessity. The fewer tools IT has to manage, the easier it is to standardize processes, ensure compliance, and maintain visibility. Companies like Vetcor, for example—a consolidated veterinary medicine organization that manages more than 800 clinics across the US and Canada—have moved from using over a dozen tools to managing their IT environment through a single platform, thanks to unified solutions like NinjaOne’s cloud-native platform.
For Vetcor, this shift means faster patch management, better device visibility, and reduced manual labor. Vetcor was able to retire multiple redundant tools, saving time, reducing errors, and giving IT more time to focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting. A boon to Vetcor, and to any other organization struggling with the multifarious challenges of endpoint management. In fact, 71 percent of customers have replaced more than four tools with NinjaOne.
Automation: Turning Endpoint Management into a Proactive Practice
Automation has quickly become the backbone of efficient endpoint management. Rather than responding to issues as they arise, automated solutions can help IT teams stay ahead of problems, ensuring devices are properly configured, patched, and secure with minimal manual intervention. For example, NinjaOne’s AI for Patch Sentiment feature helps clients assess and apply critical security updates to at-risk endpoints without disrupting employee workflows—a crucial capability given the rising rate of cyber threats.
Beyond automation, AI opens up even more possibilities for organizations, though NinjaOne’s approach here is measured. “Prioritizing customers’ safety is always at the top of our list,” Sferlazza explains. “We believe organizations pushing fully automated remediation or scripts at this point introduces potential security risks.”
Rather than giving AI full autonomy, NinjaOne is being more thoughtful—focusing on AI’s potential for making informed recommendations. In a world where AI is not yet 100 percent accurate, this approach prioritizes reliability, providing IT with decision support that makes their lives easier without adding new security and compliance challenges to the mix.
Future-Proofing IT in a World of Constant Change
Though endpoints may evolve, the challenges of endpoint management are likely to remain the same. In fact, given the increasing proliferation of IoT and the continual evolution of operating systems, endpoint sprawl is here to stay. IT leaders agree that the top companies must remain agile by investing in scalable and flexible tools to adapt to new demands as they arise. And to partner with organizations that prioritize and invest deeply in customer success and support, especially as these demands change.
As more organizations transition from fragmented stacks to integrated, cloud-first platforms, IT departments are finding they can maintain visibility over every device, consolidate tool sprawl, and automate crucial processes, all without compromising security or productivity.
NinjaOne’s approach to endpoint management is well-suited to this evolution, combining automation with an innovative toolset and an always-on customer support function to ensure IT teams of all sizes can handle the demands of any dispersed workforce.
