Viewing AIOps Through a Business Lens

AIOps Through a Business Lens

As your organization continues to rebound from the global pandemic, your CIOs will have likely accelerated your corporate digital transformation strategy. Where the exploitation of technology and data to best advantage is the order of the day to help fulfill the enterprise-wide mandate for “better, faster, cheaper” operations and outcomes. While the average IT department and IT service management (ITSM) teams have already invested in automation – to optimize across all three of the above improvement elements – there’s still more that can be done to improve how their technology-based services are designed, created, delivered, supported, and improved. One opportunity is to leverage AIOps capabilities. But what is it? And how should it be adopted? Please keep reading for answers to these and other AIOps-related questions, via three tips for viewing AIOps through a business lens.

What is #AIOps? And how should it be adopted? This article by @StephenMann takes a look. Click To Tweet

What AIOps is

Let’s start with the name – AIOps is a portmanteau of “artificial intelligence (AI)” and “IT Operations,” reflecting that it’s about using AI technologies to assist with IT service delivery and support.

Where AIOps solutions collect and analyze data from various sources to provide insights that enable better IT service delivery and support – think of this as the “how” and the “why.” An important part of the “how” being that it handles large volumes of data in real-time, that humans would struggle with, at speed.

1. Understand what AIOps does

There are many potential AIOps capabilities/use cases, such as (in alphabetical order):

  • Alert correlation
  • Alert escalation
  • Auto-remediation
  • Capacity optimization
  • Intelligent alerting
  • Root-cause analysis.

You can read more on the opportunities of AIOps in these two earlier ITSM.tools articles:

However, these capabilities/use cases aren’t the right starting point for understanding your organization’s AIOps needs. Instead, take a business-focused approach. Where you find the right AIOps solutions, if appropriate, to your organization’s business challenges and opportunities rather than finding use cases for already-procured AIOps technology.

Here @StephenMann offers three tips for viewing #AIOps through a business lens. Click To Tweet

2. Identify its value to your organization

Over the last two decades, in particular, most IT departments have transitioned from being technology-centric to one or more of service-centric, business-centric, customer-centric, employee-centric, or another approach that views IT service delivery and support through an outcome-based lens. Where, any new technology is ideally seen as more than an additional set of capabilities, but rather the solution to one or more business-related challenges or opportunities.

Think about AIOps and the associated capabilities in terms of your organization’s key business strategies, goals, challenges, and opportunities, i.e. view it through a business lens. This will help ensure that any identified use cases deliver much-needed business value. Your organization might be focused on any or all of the following strategic objectives:

  • Increasing revenue, margins, and profit
  • Reducing costs
  • Improving the service experience
  • Delivering against the increased expectations of IT
  • The need to scale-up operations
  • Speeding up change and innovation
  • Addressing people-related limitations
  • Meeting governance, risk, and compliance needs and legal or regulatory requirements
  • Getting greater insight into operations and issues in real-time.

So, where can AIOps help as part of the solution to the key challenges from the list above? But this is only the starting point.

If there’s the ambition to bring in #AIOps solutions in your organization, find out where your business would value and benefit from AIOps the most – which is often what’s hurting it most, says @StephenMann Click To Tweet

3. Prioritize where to use AIOps first

There’ll likely be many competing needs that AIOps can help with in terms of delivering optimal business value. It’s therefore important to understand not only the strategic needs of your organization and the full spectrum of where and how AIOps can help, but also what’s most important to your organization. Especially in light of the impact of the pandemic, where the focus on business survival might be a higher priority than other initiatives focused on growth.

So, if there’s the ambition to bring in AIOps solutions, find out where your organization would value and benefit from AIOps the most – which is often what’s hurting it most. Not only is this exactly the type of help your organization needs in 2021, but it’ll also help to drive your AIOps initiative(s) forward by delivering early, and much-needed, benefits that resonate with key business stakeholders.

Is your organization already using AIOps capabilities to improve IT and business operations and outcomes? If so, what advice would you offer to others? Please let us all know in the comments.

Stephen Mann

Principal Analyst and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.

Previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, IT asset management, innovation and creativity facilitation, project management, finance consultancy, internal audit, and product marketing for a SaaS IT service management technology vendor.

Want ITSM best practice and advice delivered directly to your inbox? Why not sign up for our newsletter? This way you won't miss any of the latest ITSM tips and tricks.

nl subscribe strip imgage

More Topics to Explore

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *