By Crystal Miceli, VP and Global Head of Solutions and Technical Marketing at Ivanti

Imagine a utopian world in which the IT department is an indisputably critical business driver - serving as the link between a company and the technology that drives productivity, enhances efficiency, reduces overhead costs, and drives innovation. In this scenario, the IT service desk is free from many of the common, tedious requests that take up time and tie up the team without delivering tangible ROI - and is focused on humanizing both the internal and external service experience for more complex situations.

Given today's increasingly challenging business environments and the pace of digital transformation, IT is more important than ever before. In fact, Forrester predicts that 2021 will see businesses doubling down on "technology-fueled experience, operations, products and ecosystems." Additionally, Gartner forecasts that worldwide IT spending will grow 4% this year, to a projected total of $3.8 trillion globally. There's no doubt that IT has earned its seat in the boardroom, but to achieve this IT ‘nirvana,' business leaders need to re-imagine the ITSM function.

AI has generated a significant amount of buzz and is often touted as the solution to all IT problems over the last few years, but broad adoption is not yet a reality for most companies. As multi-cloud environments expand, the increasing number of datasets generated by IT systems, networks, and applications grow in complexity. Unfortunately, there are not enough human resources to manually analyze, interpret, and apply solutions to drive a seamless customer experience. As a result, one of the most robust, tangible use cases for AI is IT Operations.

An Introduction to AIOps: For the Service Desk and Beyond

Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is a process allowing businesses to leverage big data and machine learning to enhance, automate, and optimize IT operations, including monitoring applications and the IT service desk. The potential of AIOps for IT Service Management (ITSM) is massive - particularly for teams serving a dispersed, remote workforce - which nearly everyone has been doing this past year.

AIOps' ability to help mitigate common service desk requests through hyperautomation is a significant win for service ticket initiators and IT teams. There is nothing more powerful than the gift of time. With AIOps running point on service desk requests, IT teams can allocate their time and expertise to problems only people can handle - saving organizations time and money, reducing ticket resolution times, and improving the overall employee experience.

But AIOps potential extends far beyond desktop support - an example of this can be found in the technical architectures supporting the auto-discovery and dependency mapping process of business services. In this scenario, AIOps can help IT teams understand complex cloud and on-premises environments and infrastructures and leverage predictive analytics to remain ahead of incidents and prevent unnecessary impacts of change. AIOps can also:

• Increase an Organization's Roadmap to Digital Maturity: Automating specific IT operations will enhance an organization's performance, reliability, and resilience.
• Remove Friction and Streamline Workflows: Full stack visibility allows IT teams to identify the root cause and act quickly - saving time, money, and improving service for customers and employees.
• Detect Changes and Flag Predictions: AIOps will send alerts of anomalies and events that are detected. Organizations can also follow up with a CSM and a ticket to self-heal where applicable - contributing to overall efficiency of ITOps teams.

From Hype to Reality: How Businesses of Any Size Can Get Started

Similar to other IT deployments, AIOps and AITSM require careful planning, testing, and superior oversight of the Configuration Management Database (CMBD), which provides users with a single-source-of truth considering the impact and risk of IT changes. It's also a helpful tool for prioritization. Be sure to include governance throughout the project duration, as it's imperative every step and detail is accurately and efficiently addressed by members of the IT team. To simplify the process further, consider starting with the more straightforward tasks first - employ hyperautomation to resolve the mundane and repetitive IT requests that don't always require the human touch. This approach will allow your IT team to shift their time to other planning and development areas, as well as the bigger picture. When you begin to see a lift in business outcomes or user satisfaction, such as a decrease in ticket time resolution or accurate and automated responses to infrastructure glitches, you'll know your company is well on its way to success.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crystal Miceli serves as Vice President of Product & Technical Marketing at Ivanti where she drives the development and execution of the product marketing strategy, and development of compelling product messaging and stories about the value that Ivanti products provide to customers. Crystal came to Ivanti with over 20 years of experience in marketing, product management, professional services, customer success and engineering at Wal-Mart, BMC Software, CA Technologies and others. She holds a BS in Applied Computing & Technology from Tulane University and an MBA from Louisiana State University.