Deploy AIOps to Improve IT Operations

Transform your organization and revolutionize IT operations by fostering a data-driven approach.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Get ready to embrace automation.

CEOs often find their IT departments very expensive and hesitate to adopt technology into their businesses. Other business leaders cannot keep up with the pace of improving technology, causing them to fall behind the competition. Given the extremely high speed of technology since the emergence of generative AI, business leaders get overwhelmed and, in many cases, confused about what innovative technology they should select to transform their businesses.

On the other side of the coin are IT leaders who want their business leaders' buy-in to technology. The IT leaders want to transition from firefighting mode and become proactive, but increasing end-user expectations and technology troubles prohibit them from implementing AI into their processes. Just like business leaders, they are overwhelmed with multiple use cases, which makes decision-making challenging.

This blueprint will help you determine the feasibility of using AIOps within IT operations, identify use cases that bring huge value to processes, and shortlist those use cases to build a tangible AIOps deployment plan.

Mahmoud Ramin, PhD Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Your business is tempted to invest heavily in automation to improve IT processes but has difficulty pinpointing its goals for such investments.
• AI-powered solutions are relatively new, and your business may lack the capability to assess requirements, identify use cases, and implement AIOps tools. These shortcomings can create confusion around navigating AIOps solutions, aligning core requirements with offerings, and building a solid AIOps deployment plan.
• Inefficient and unclear processes for the automation of IT operations waste resources and cause stakeholder resistance.

Common Obstacle

• Pinpointing specific challenges for AI and automation can be a difficult task.
• It’s impossible to automate all use cases. They should be prioritized, which requires strategic planning and can be very challenging.
• Automation and analysis will be pointless without proper data collection processes.
• AI technology has become a major initiative for organizations, and vendors provide solutions with a multitude of features. The hurdle of determining which automation technology is right for your needs can make it challenging to set a realistic timeline for deployment and improvement.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Discuss current business and IT automation goals to better align them and discover use cases to help fulfill them.
• Clarify core functionalities of automation tools to help you define tool selection criteria.
• Identify which functional areas within operations management need to be prioritized for improvement and shortlist use cases that will benefit most from AI-based technology.
• Prepare a plan and checklist of action items to deploy AI capabilities and improve your IT operations.

Info-Tech Insight

Rather than merely focusing on IT operational improvement, align your AIOps objectives with the organization’s business goals.

Effective operations management practices will improve service delivery capabilities and lower IT costs

Effective operations management will help you do the following:

• Improve IT efficiency

  Effective IT service management (ITSM) develops and uses structured processes for potential automation and increases process consistency across the IT organization, ultimately improving its efficiency.

• Improve visibility and information sharing within IT

  Good operations management can improve visibility into current performance levels. It can expose weaknesses, help you anticipate potential problems, and help IT prepare to move from a firefighting role to an innovating role. Good operations management also promotes information sharing across different IT functions to enable good decision-making.

• Create and clarify accountability and responsibility

  Efficient IT operations management sets a clear level of accountability throughout the IT organization and ensures roles and responsibilities for all IT service delivery tasks and processes.

• Control IT costs

  IT operations management is concerned with delivering promised services as efficiently as possible. Proficient IT operations practices provide insight into current costs across the IT organization and present opportunities for cost savings.

• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement

  Effective IT operations management helps you conduct better root cause analyses of problems, provide better customer service, and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

Info-Tech Insight

Since IT leaders are expected to predict disruptions to IT operations, automating those operations would help IT leaders focus on technology strategy, innovation opportunities, and running IT – all at the same time. AIOps capabilities enable businesses to run their operations more intelligently.

What is AIOps?

AI enables machines to simulate human behavior and empowers them to learn through a series of algorithms.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  A field of computer science that focuses on building systems to imitate human behavior. Not all AI systems have learning behavior; many systems (such as customer service chatbots) operate on preset rules.

• Machine Learning (ML)

  The AI system is instructed to search for patterns in a dataset and then make predictions based on that set. In this way, the system learns to provide accurate content over time. Supervised intervention is required if the data is inaccurate. Deep learning is self-supervised and does not require intervention.

• Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps)

  AIOps uses a combination of AI and ML to monitor, analyze, automate, and enhance various aspects of IT operations. AIOps helps IT operations improve their processes, tasks, and decisions by using a high volume of data.

Info-Tech Insight

To get high-quality simulations, provide high-quality data. ML analyzes the data and presents findings to predict and alert your operations of potential issues.

Organizations are enthusiastic about embracing AI and automation, but achieving success proves to be challenging

• 55% — CIOs Embrace AI

  Fifty-five percent of CIOs are exploring what is possible with AI (Info-Tech, 2023).

• 35% — AI Dominates 2024

  Thirty-five percent of CIOs plan to invest in AI in 2024, making it the top technology of the year for new spending planned (Info-Tech, 2023).

• 76% — AI Scaling Struggle

  Among AI-using C-suite executives, 76% face scaling challenges for growth (Accenture, 2019).

• 75% — Necessity of AI Deployment

  Seventy-five percent of C-suite executives believe they should apply a widespread AI deployment to avoid risking business closure by 2025 (Accenture, 2019).

Automation of IT operations processes is a hot topic

Info-Tech surveyed 218 CIOs on the use cases for AI by end of 2024. Here are the most popular use cases:

• 69% — Business analytics or intelligence

• 68% — Repetitive, low-level task automation

• 66% — Risk identification and security improvement

• 62% — IT operations

• 57% — Conversational AI or virtual assistants (VAs)

AI and ML help managers cope with noisy and complex environments

According to a 2019 BigPanda survey, almost half of IT leaders believe that data has become noisier and more complex. That said, IT automation will have a big role in handling IT and business operations. This will enable CXOs to deal with their common challenges.

The Importance of Automation

This graph depicts the percentage of respondents who felt automation was critical in these three areas. (Source: BigPanda, 2019)

What Do Enterprises Want?

• 89% — Ease of Adoption

• 81% — Data Scientist Independence

• 77% — Time to Value

(Source: BigPanda, 2019)

Despite its huge benefits, organizations hesitate to adopt AIOps

1. AI Innovation Confidence

   Low confidence that AI will be helpful and truly reflect innovation.

2. Implementation Knowledge

   Lack of knowledge about implementing AIOps for high-value data collection.

3. Internal Expertise

   Lack of technical AIOps expertise causes an added layer of resistance.

4. Leaders’ Uncertainty

   The scope of AIOps may not be clear to business leaders still exploring how AIOps fits into their business.

5. Organizational resistance

   AIOps requires extensive training, and employees may fear being replaced by technology.

6. Lack of success stories

   Some vendors may lack experience and proven track records, making defining successful adoption difficult.

Info-Tech’s approach: Tackle your AIOps initiatives with a promising plan

• Analyze Your AI Maturity

  Assess whether you are in a state to get the most benefits from an AIOps technology.

• Define AIOps Opportunities

  Discover use cases and AIOps features to align them with your goals.

• Design a Shortlist

  Make a list of primary initiatives that will give you the most benefits.

• Develop a Deployment Plan

  Make a checklist of action items to prepare a pilot deployment.

• Enhance Capabilities

  Build a roadmap for action items and apply the lessons learned to future automation initiatives.

Deploy AIOps to Improve IT Operations

Transform your organization and revolutionize IT Operations by fostering a data-driven approach.

Rather than merely focusing on IT operational improvement, set your AIOps objectives in alignment with the organization's business goals.

Construct a holistic framework within IT operations to improve workflows, demonstrate improvement to business leads, and get buy-in for further automations.

$26.33 Billion –› $644.96 Billion

The global AIOps market size was $26.33 billion in 2020 and will reach $644.96 billion by 2030. (Allied Market Research, 2021)

The Problem

Despite its huge benefits, enterprises hesitate to implement AIOps due to a lack of solid goals, data quality, and skill set.

The Challenges

• Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and IT cannot keep up.
• AI options are plentiful, and IT leaders do not know which capabilities to adopt.
• Business leaders want to automate IT processes, but due to lack of AIOps understanding, they hesitate to adopt an AIOps technology.
• Agents hesitate to build AI around processes, as it makes them concerned about job insecurity.
• Absence of well-documented foundational requirements increases the complexity of the AIOps deployment process.

The Framework

1. Assess your AIOps readiness

   • 1.1 – Identify the gap to assess the current state in the following five areas:

     • Governance: AIOps policies, standards, and documentation to minimize risk and maximize benefits
     • Data: Data strategy and management to avoid "garbage in, garbage out"
     • Skills: Job descriptions and competencies to ensure knowledge transfer and enhance deployment
     • Processes: Documented AI processes to streamline use case selection, prioritization, and implementation
     • Tool set: Technology and innovative approaches to build and run AI infrastructure

   • 1.2 – Discover automation use cases

   • Tools, Templates, and Deliverables

     • AIOps Maturity Assessment
     • List of Automation Use Cases

2. Identify & prioritize valuable use cases

   • 2.1 – Evaluate your AIOps core features with other players in the market and their offerings

   • 2.2 – Align and prioritize AI capabilities using the use case prioritization matrix

     The order displayed in this heat map is for representation purposes only and may be different for different scenarios.
     

   • 2.3 – Develop skill sets

   • Tools, Templates, and Deliverables

     • Use Case Prioritization Matrix
     • AIOps Requirements Workbook
     • Roles and Responsibilities

3. Implement & deploy your AIOps solution

   • 3.1 – Plan a pilot deployment

   • 3.2 – Monitor and improve usability

   • 3.3 – Extend and enhance capabilities

   • Tools, Templates, and Deliverables

     • AIOps Checklist
     • Documented KPIs and Metrics
     • AIOps Roadmap

The stakeholder buy-in presentation is developed throughout the process and is the most important deliverable.

Case study

INDUSTRY: Financial Services | SOURCE: BMC

Transamerica transformed IT services by adopting AIOps.

Current Situation

• Transamerica, a renowned insurance provider, sought to enhance ITSM and reduce the number of tickets and problems.
• With more than 10,000 servers, 1,500 apps, and 15 data centers, the corporation had a sizable and intricate IT infrastructure.
• The business had to deal with issues like high operational costs, poor efficiency, low customer satisfaction, and lengthy resolution times.

Challenges

• The company needed to modernize its ITSM processes and switch to a proactive and anticipatory strategy. It lacked the tools and procedures necessary to track and examine the massive amounts of data produced by its IT systems.
• It also struggled with siloed teams, manual processes, and inconsistent workflows.
• The business required a solution to automate ITSM processes, optimize resources, boost performance, and increase security.

Solution

• The company partnered with BMC to leverage its AIOps platform, TrueSight. The platform helped the business transform their ITSM and automate processes throughout IT.
• IT was able to provide the platform with data from multiple sources such as logs, metrics, events, and tickets. It used AI and ML algorithms to correlate and analyze the data.
• As a result, IT could automate incident detection, resolution, and prevention. IT could also optimize resources via data-driven analytics and enhance security.

Info-Tech’s approach for deploying AIOps to improve IT operations

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Key deliverable:

Stakeholder Buy-In Presentation

Document your strategy using this boardroom-ready template.

AIOps Maturity Assessment

Create an actionable plan for your AIOps project.

Use Case Prioritization Matrix

Leverage this tool to produce a shortlist of AIOps processes that will help you the most in reaching your goals.

AIOps Checklist

Build a checklist for the deployment team to ensure that project initiatives are delivered according to the outlined plan.

Additional deliverables

AIOps Requirements Workbook

Use this document to communicate your AIOps requirements with vendors and compare vendor capabilities.

AIOps Roadmap

Leverage this tool to produce a shortlist of AIOps processes that will help you the most in reaching your goals.

AIOps ROI Calculator

Estimate the return on investment to determine if the benefits will be worth the cost and effort.

Insight Summary

Align AIOps with business goals

Rather than merely focusing on IT operational improvement, set your AIOps objectives in alignment with the organization’s business goals.

Assess your readiness to determine the right path

Before implementing any AI solution, assess your readiness. An AIOps platform or any other automation tool may not improve IT processes when your data maturity level, processes, infrastructure, and skill sets are underdeveloped.

Think big, start small

Look at your IT operations holistically when building your strategy, but don’t automate all processes. Start with the use cases that provide affected stakeholders with the real benefits of AI, then expand AI throughout IT.

Take constant action

Many organizations implement AIOps, then sit back and await the benefits. However, AI initiatives require continuous maintenance, accurate tracking, and effective communication with stakeholders to succeed.

Work persistently

IT operations management isn’t a one-time project – it’s an ongoing effort. Assess the efficiency of your processes annually, compare it with the previous year, and enhance the processes that will provide the most benefits to IT and business.

Build a framework to get buy-in

Construct a holistic framework within IT operations to improve workflows and demonstrate its impact to business leaders to get buy-in for further automations.

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• To implement AI-based solutions, IT needs to be at a certain maturity level. This blueprint will help you determine IT’s readiness before spending time and money to implement a solution.
• Selecting an AI solution that fulfills prioritized requirements will help IT automate processes to reduce the time spent on repetitive and low-value tasks, freeing up time for IT staff to work on more sophisticated activities.
• This blueprint will guide IT to define process requirements that fit IT and business goals.

Business Benefits

• Improving IT operations leads to high-quality and efficient service management that will benefit the whole organization.
• Automation of IT operations will make staff more productive, reduce costs, provide better resource allocation, align staff with business requirements, and improve business productivity.
• Automation of tasks will reduce service disruptions, improve timeliness of operations, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction.
• This blueprint will help you build a comprehensive list of business requirements that AIOps can fulfill.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Guided Implementation

A guided implementation (GI) is series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is six to seven calls over the course of three to four months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?