The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on IT Operations in 2019
Author: Phil Tee, CEO of Moogsoft
Artificial intelligence is changing business operations, and companies can expect to see significant shifts in the role of AI for IT operations, or AIOps, in 2019. The power of AI doesn’t stop at robotics, driverless cars or voice-controlled speakers. AIOps is truly moving the needle for IT operations, putting to use the big data enterprises produce each day for a more productive IT team. With the proper tools in place, enterprises can automatically reduce the number of daily system alerts, empowering IT to ensure peak performance, service integrity, and business agility.
Here are five predictions for the growing AIOps market in the coming year:
1. Automation will shift the focus of IT operations
Efficient IT operations depend on an enormous amount of data to understand how devices and applications perform in an organization’s global infrastructure. The mechanical process for digesting this data, conducting analysis, rejecting false results, and isolating potential root cause is more efficient and more accurate when done with AIOps.
In 2019, IT will value the ability to apply business analytics to results generated by AIOps, as opposed to simply detecting incidents and dispatching triage. Humans are still critical to the process of setting appropriate service levels and instructing AIOps platforms on how to affect better business outcomes. IT professionals will shift their focus to reducing the impact of incidents on both internal and external customers in alignment with customer success teams.
2. AIOps will be a necessity for new industries
AIOps enables agile team workflows to ensure the maximum performance and integrity of IT operations. Because of this, industries with exponential growth in system data — such as telecommunication service providers — will be the most likely to adopt AIOps this year. This is akin to the financial services sector, which successfully adopted AI in high-volume trading systems, followed closely by large manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies.
AIOps will be the only way for telecommunication service providers to ensure the integrity of 5G operations in 2019. Cell towers have a transmission range of about 10–19 miles, but 5G networks use much smaller cells limited to a range of 32 feet to one mile. The volume of 5G cells will exponentially grow the number of systems that need monitoring. The telemetry volume of 5G systems will swamp outdated legacy technology developed during the 1990s. For many telecom providers, AIOps will be the only viable solution.
3. The number of AIOps use cases will expand
The transformation of AIOps began with the automation of IT event response, as a result of growing compute capacity and big data enabled by the cloud. Now AIOps can leverage time series data and machine learning in additional ways. This year will see new use cases for AIOps such as cybersecurity and capacity planning. As this happens, AIOps will eventually touch all areas of digital operations. This will be especially true for organizations using a mix of private, hybrid and public cloud applications and infrastructure.
4. Service providers will use AIOps to differentiate on durability
Many service providers are currently facing the challenge of effectively differentiating themselves and their offerings from competitors. In 2019, AIOps will be used by some to demonstrate their durability. AIOps allows service providers to ensure peak performance and operational continuity, and then to deliver valuable data as substantial proof of durability. This year, organizations will capitalize on the effectiveness of AIOps for keeping systems stable, avoiding typical incidents, ensuring availability and protecting customers from outages and downtime.
5. The AIOps market will become (more) crowded and noisy
As the power and potential of AIOps become more widely understood by enterprise buyers, expect the large legacy IT vendors to “follow the money.” As more providers join the conversation, IT professionals will be challenged to separate reality from hype. We should expect buyers to become more savvy and discerning. AIOps is impacting all businesses that run on IT, and no one will be exempt.
Virtually every profession faces the changes brought by AI-enabled automation. Every IT organization can benefit from AIOps and its ability to deliver operational continuity and business agility. 2019 is definitely a year to watch.
