News Roundup, March 26, 2021: What’s Happening in AIOps, ITOps, and IT Monitoring  

Kodak founder George Eastman revolutionized photography by creating a developing process using “dry plate technology”—simplifying the manual process while utilizing smaller cameras. So sit back, post that photo of your lunch on Instagram, and catch-up on the latest news in AIOps,  ITOps, and IT infrastructure monitoring.

1. Here’s how to build security into the cloud after a hasty adoption.

Utilizing a cloud continues growing in popularity and functionality, however making sure the strongest security methods are used remains paramount, as described in this piece from CIODIVE.com.

Service providers protect the infrastructure and underlying compute power from malicious actors, but the enterprise retains responsibility for configuring the security of workloads and operations.

Moving to the cloud can be scary as the enterprise embraces the unknown and navigates how to secure it. With the addition of cyber insurance offerings, Google is essentially saying, “let’s make this a little bit less scary for you,” Jadee Hanson, CISO and CIO at Code42, said.

In a rush to the cloud for business continuity last year, some organizations skipped security in favor of speed to adoption. Now, nearly every organization — 96% — is concerned about their cloud security, according to a July 2020 Sophos report surveying more than 3,500 IT managers.

Many of the controls in the cloud computing environment are easier to use because of automation and other factors provided by vendors.

2. Get five leadership tips from women in data science.

Women in high levels of the technology realm often faced additional challenges to succeed, but many have and in this informative article from CIODIVE.com, some women share their unique recipes for achievement in this fascinating field.

While seeking positions of leadership, women in data science fostered a mix of planning, communication and professional development skills coupled with their existing technical prowess to help advance their careers.

The overarching tips include:

• Mastering time management
• Utilizing a solutions-oriented mentality
• Upending the mentorship model
• Incorporating a customer-first approach
• Learning how to sell

Women in the technology space have to contend with structural issues, such as microaggressions during their workday or sexist attitudes from leadership. For women in data science, entering senior roles required exercising soft skills alongside technical prowess.

3. AIOps investment improves customer service, boosts ROI.

Prior to switching to AIOps, an enterprise must first determine how to make it specifically work for its specific needs.  This article from TechTarget.com offers some keen insights on how investing in infrastructure in the area of AIOps adds value.

In most enterprise models, investment in infrastructure follows a simple rule: spend to add value. In that view, the IT operations investment is relatively low, and its average annual spend as percentage of revenue was just over eight percent, according to the “Flexera 2020 State of Tech Spend Report.”

Some main points covered include:

• Proliferation of technology
• Investing in technology
• Transition to a new model
• How to reap the rewards

There are some important questions to consider when evaluating if AIOps is the right fit for an organization, such as:

• Does the use case call for AIOps?
• Is the AIOps strategy adaptable?

Once the use case and health of data have been verified, some best practices can help keep an AIOps rollout on track include:

• Tag and catalog data
• Rank both services and dependencies
• Seek expertise for portions of the process, often with data analyses

With increased and intelligent spending in AIOps, an organization is prepared to provide quality customer service and added value to business objectives. Streamlined AIOps provides an advantage against competitors, identifies areas of business growth and turns operations into a value stream rather than a cost stream.

4. Who’s winning in the $17B AIOps and observability market?

The AIOps and cloud observability market is estimated to be worth $17 billion annually, and a new trend is for smaller businesses to try and get some of this big money items for themselves according to Datanami. We are pleased to mention that ScienceLogic is considered to be one of the leaders in this movement.

Organizations today are under the gun to keep their IT infrastructure and applications up and running, and to minimize the amount of downtime they suffer. This, of course, has always been the goal, but it’s more difficult to achieve today due to modern architectures (microservices, containerization, hybrid-cloud deployments, growth of the edge) as well as the manner in which they are developed (agile DevOps techniques accelerated through sprints).

The huge volume of computer logs and metrics generated by today’s applications, and the increasing complexity of modern IT infrastructure, means special techniques are required to understand what’s going on. This often includes distributed storage and processing of the raw logs and metrics that are the basis of this space, as well as machine learning techniques for understanding patterns buried amid the noise.

These factors have combined to re-define the IT monitoring and management space. We’ve moved beyond simple log monitoring into the world of AI-powered operations (AIOps), which live within the broad realm of tools that provide full visibility of the entire problem space (observability, or cloud observability).

As you can see, the market for AIOps, log monitoring, and observability is rich and diverse, with lots of players seeking to differentiate themselves in specific parts of the stack. Several years ago, some observers thought the market was ripe for consolidation. There has been some consolidation. But the number of new entrants to the space, as well as established IT management firms pivoting into AIOps and cloud observability, would seem to have them outnumbered.

Just getting started with AIOps and want to learn more? Read the eBook, “Your Guide to Getting Started with AIOps”»