Manifesto for IT Ops in the age of AI

Contemporary enterprises have to constantly catch up with the transformation happening due to technology disruption, the volatility of the business, and ever-evolving business models. While the industry has evolved, matured, and capitalized on the innovations, disruptions, and transformations in the last few decades, it makes perfect business sense for CIOs and IT Managers to look at a holistic view of their governance or frameworks that drive their IT Operations.

Some of the levers that business enterprises use to keep their IT Operations at their best are

· Process Standardization

· SLA Governance

· Automation & Optimization

· Knowledge Management

· Operations Management

Looking at these levers, IT functions can derive a manifesto to deal with the complexity and the multi-layered systems and processes, thereby enabling them to continually innovate while escaping the bureaucracy trap. In the age of AI, it is important to review the levers that infuse intelligence.

Here are some of the values IT functions can consider to improve their IT operations by leveraging the power of AI.

1) ‘Speed and Service Availability’ over SLA Adherence — AI-powered bots have proved themselves to be more powerful and adept at executing a variety of tasks with a high degree of accuracy and that too faster than their human counterparts. Here are some characteristics:

· Faster Ticket Routing — Automating service workflow leads to faster ticket routing

· Faster Incident Analysis and Resolution — Moving away from a documented Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) approach to an AI-powered Robot Operated Procedure (ROP)

· Reduction of Ticket Velocity — AI-driven causal analysis leads to enhanced ticket categorization and management that helps reduce ticket velocity (MTTR) over time

· Improved Service Availability — AI-driven Predictive analysis can help in preventing unplanned outages.

2) Emphasis on Intelligent digital labor over human labor — can lead to cost, time saving, and reduced human dependencies. Here are some of its characteristics:

· Reduced human dependency for meeting the KTLO objectives and repetitive tasks

· Automated Application monitoring and Self-healing AI framework improve the availability

· Improved Productivity that allows human resources to focus on more value-added, unique tasks as all mundane tasks are taken care of by digitally programmed robots

· Improved collaboration

3) Disintermediation over human process dependency- AI-powered Automation can drastically reduce helpdesk and other human related dependencies. Here are some of its characteristics:

· Faster Ticket Assignment and Prioritization — This is accomplished by past ticket data analysis. AI-powered Automation helps reduce the overhead of the engineering and the helpdesk teams

· A better definition of SLAs with minimum human effort- SLAs may also be assigned based on the past complexity, ticket resolution time through efficient analytics

· Service Improvement — Automating service measurement (e.g. SLAs), service reporting, and support of the transition process and training reduces the LOE effort and eliminates the loss of knowledge

· Faster Approval Process –Automating Service workflows improve transparency and often leads to more rapid approval.

4) Risk Reduction over Reactive Issue Management — AI-Powered automation approach can dramatically reduce impediments caused due human intervention. Here are some of its characteristics:

· Higher Accuracy — Once adequately trained and configured, AI-powered automated tasks can be less prone to error than humans. Especially when machine learning is introduced to the automation equation, bots can learn from their mistakes, making them less likely to repeat them

· Early Outage Warnings — Automated Predictive Analysis processes like Dynamic thresholding, Multivariate anomaly detection, sequential pattern analysis, etc., help identify potential service issues before they cause service outages and degradations. This helps to minimize downtime and reduce business risk

· Reducing the MTTR — Features like Auto-healing and early detection of upcoming problems help improve the MTTR.

5) Digital Knowledge Over Tacit Knowledge — Tacit knowledge has always been a vital asset for a company. It’s the sum of experiences and insights of the people who make up an organization. However, this information has been largely undocumented and inaccessible to those outside of the group. Many organizations face a situation related to Unknown-Known risks when such knowledge is lost. Digitally capturing knowledge with the help of machine learning can improve the organization’s knowledge base and reduce human dependency. Here are some of its characteristics:

· Knowledge distribution with minimal people connect

· Capture and convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge

· Reduced human dependency in building and maintaining the organization knowledgebase

Conclusion

Adoption of these values will drive innovation and modernize their IT Governance. This will improve efficiency, reduce time and cost, and also improves employee and customer satisfaction.

Want to know more on how AIOps is going to be a game changer for your enterprise, schedule an on-demand tech-talk with the folks at Qinfinite to learn more about the value of AIOps for your digital operations.