Harness AI to Reduce the Cost and Effort of KTLO in IT Operations

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IT leaders and their teams face escalating pressure to deliver transformation and value to the organization. Yet they spend more than half their time and budget just keeping the lights on (KTLO), which leaves limited capacity to modernize, build critical skills, and innovate. Our research framework maps out a four-step path to relieve IT’s KTLO burden, free up resources for innovation, and address the IT skills gap – all by harnessing the power of AI.

In today’s economic uncertainty, IT may be targeted for cost cutting. But now is the time to make a strategic investment in AI, to finally tackle the KTLO conundrum. By automating low-value tasks, IT gains back precious time and budget for innovation. In the process, IT hones its AI knowledge and capability, narrowing its own skills gap. Learn how to strategically leverage AI so IT can redirect its efforts toward innovation, value, and skills development.

1. KTLO by the numbers: where IT’s time and money really go.

Routine IT operations and maintenance tasks occupy 66% of IT teams’ time and effort while consuming 82.6% of IT budget spend, according to Info-Tech’s 2025 IT Spend and Staffing benchmarking data. With so much tied up in KTLO, it’s no wonder IT struggles with the bandwidth to lead more impactful initiatives.

2. Don’t just fix IT problems faster – prevent them entirely.

Incident management is traditionally aimed at restoring services quickly. But AIOps can help teams move from this reactive approach to autonomous prevention and even incident prediction. Don’t waste time and team resources fixing issues you can pre-emptively avoid with AI.

3. Automated governance is actually a good thing.

Autonomous patch and vulnerability management automates governance by turning a chaotic, manual security vulnerability into a predictable, continuous pipeline of nearly 100% compliance. The IT resources tied up in manual governance chores can then be diverted to more complex, high-value projects.

Use our step-by-step roadmap to reclaim KTLO resources for higher-impact work.

This comprehensive research framework and its supporting presentation template empower IT teams to lower their KTLO workload, enhance their AI skills, and become strategic partners in innovation.

Use our methodology to:

Evaluate the opportunities for AI-powered IT.
Forecast the value of proven KTLO reduction tactics.
Mitigate the well-known risks.

Harness AI to Reduce the Cost and Effort of KTLO in IT Operations Research & Tools

1. Harness AI to Reduce the Cost and Effort of KTLO in IT Operations Storyboard – A detailed PowerPoint deck filled with insightful analysis and practical steps to move from KTLO to driving value via AI deployment.

This storyboard guides you through four key steps to assess which AI tactics could reduce your IT team’s KTLO burden.

Uncover the potential opportunities of each tactic.
Quantify the value of each opportunity.
Conduct a readiness and risk assessment for each opportunity.
Create a blueprint of specific initiatives for AI-enabled KTLO reduction.

2. Quantified KTLO Reduction Initiative Portfolio – A PowerPoint presentation document outlining how specific AI initiatives could reduce the time and resources your IT team spends on KTLO.

Use this document to demonstrate the potential value of your chosen AI initiatives.

Estimate the cost outlay for each initiative.
Project the cost savings from each initiative.
Project the amount of IT team effort saved through each initiative.
Estimate time to value for each initiative.

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About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.