Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Reach AIOps maturity in 2022, transform the IT estate by 2025
By Rajiv Patnam, VP of Global Solutions,
ScienceLogic
At the end of 2020, many expected the pressures of the pandemic to
accelerate AIOps adoption in 2021. They were half-right, especially when AIOps customers were half-ready. While the shift to
extended remote and hybrid work underscored the need to automate IT operations,
many organizations learned the hard way: Adopting AIOps without the requisite
data and organizational maturity can hinder progress toward full
implementation.
Despite its growing pains, AIOps will be the industry standard for IT
operations within five years. In 2022, organizations that invest in evolving to
AIOps maturity in the long term will be positioned at the forefront of data and
cloud management -- even if the process cannot yet meet short-term needs. At
the same time, AIOps providers must orient solutions to empower practitioners
with accessible, actionable intelligence while demonstrating value to business
leaders through clear visibility across the IT estate.
A successful pathway to AIOps maturity must focus on maximizing
visibility and actionability to better support IT management professionals, integrating
IT operations into core business objectives and functionalities and drawing on
lessons learned in 2021 to anticipate challenges ahead.
Preparing for Setbacks
A major lesson of 2021 was the need to anticipate roadblocks to AIOps
adoption. Some adopters of AIOps software underestimated the scale of data
maturity required to reach full AIOps maturity. High-profile configuration
errors such as the one
that caused the 2021 Facebook outage demonstrated the need for strong change
monitoring and management and network resilience. The IT skills gap posed
challenges for the software supply chain. Questions arose around application
workload: does it makes sense to run an entire business on one platform? How
can businesses achieve full connectivity, integration and visibility across
multiple platforms and cloud ecosystems?
Adopting AIOps is a multi-year project with promising short-term
benefits and transformative long-term potential. The companies that
successfully realize that potential will be the ones that prepare for setbacks in
the process while remaining committed to the broader AIOps vision. Moreover,
readiness for known challenges will make surprise obstacles that much easier to
overcome. As we look ahead to the coming year and beyond, expect organizations
that devote time and resources to preparation in 2022 to become 2025's
pioneers.
From Visibility to Actionability
The pandemic fast-tracked last year's rapid migration to the cloud as
companies across industries moved to enable work from anywhere. The dramatic
pivot to cloud and hybrid-cloud models also served to reframe IT operations
from siloed workstream enablers to a core CX and EX catalysts. Practitioners
and business leaders alike need a higher level of visibility that offers
actionable intelligence and automates the investigative process to shorten the
distance between the problem and the human decision necessary to solve it.
For example, even amid the Great Resignation, retaining practitioner
teams is critical to organizations' business objectives. Increased
actionability is critical to leveraging the talent organizations already have.
Skilled IT professionals -- already short in supply -- face a
daunting workload, between the pressures of supporting remote work, disruptions
in the software supply chain and the risk of adverse events like network
outages or cyberattacks. Offering tools that increase efficiency, build
capacity and automate rote tasks to allow IT teams to put their prized experience
and expertise to best use.
AIOps began as a capability that offers end-to-end visibility of the
entirety of the IT estate. We now recognize that its true potential lies in
providing only the information necessary to make decisions, not just about misconfigurations
or gaps in data storage but about key business operations that impact customers
as well as end users. Partnerships between enterprises and vendors that can move
from visibility to actionability while focusing on business outcomes, empower
their existing practitioners to deliver on the promise of AIOps and will form as
the vanguard of next-generation AIOps users.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raj Patnam is Vice President of Global Alliances at ScienceLogic, and as an early employee has played a variety of roles over the past 16 years at ScienceLogic. He’s led team efforts in product, sales, consulting and go-to-market efforts to help clients achieve demonstrable business success using SL1 as a foundation to drive innovative solutions.