Today we want to talk about infrastructure management using AIOps, that is, based on artificial intelligence and already proven automation practices. In this post, you will find the definition of AIOps from the point of view of Gartner, as well as the advantages of the technology, which experts note for different areas - service management, HR and cyber security.
Companies that need new IT services face many dangers, and this is not about information security threats. For example, there is a risk of spending too much money on purchasing incompatible solutions, and also drowning in the integration processes of dozens of solutions at the API level. Such integrations are quite difficult to implement, but even harder to maintain! A change even in one of the utilities can lead to temporary inoperability of the entire system and require additional integrations - that is, costs.
AIOps is a new approach to IT management. It appeared as a response to the challenges that modern companies face when trying to solve new problems with old means, integrate disparate tools, and so on. At the heart of the AIOps concept is the application of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to those massive amounts of data about IT services and the infrastructure that supports them. When properly implemented, AIOps should help IT departments automate IT, improve infrastructure efficiency and manageability.
At the same time, according to research by Gartner, only 5% of companies noted that AIOps is part of their IT strategy in 2018. However, the situation has changed a lot over the years, and analysts suggest that by 2023, 30% will be AIOps showcases. Analysts are confident that organizations that lack the resources or skills to build an AIOps framework will use third-party AIOps platforms. Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that BCC Research projects the global AIOps market to grow from $ 3 billion in 2021 to $ 9.4 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 26%.
AIOps creates Exceptional Service Provider (MSP) capabilities. As a dedicated IT company, every provider can reap many benefits from using AIOps: lower costs, better service delivery, increased cybersecurity ... and ultimately deliver AIOps to their customers.
AIOps according to Gartner
The concept (and practice) of AIOps aims to go beyond sprawling API-based toolsets and integrations to create a unified and centralized framework for managing the entire infrastructure. According to Garnter, the key benefits of this approach are:
AIOps is one of the answers to the current need for further automation. And today on the market more and more solutions, if not built entirely on the basis of AIOps, then at least are created taking into account these new trends. For example, this is exactly what we do at Acronis.
Companies that need new IT services face many dangers, and this is not about information security threats. For example, there is a risk of spending too much money on purchasing incompatible solutions, and also drowning in the integration processes of dozens of solutions at the API level. Such integrations are quite difficult to implement, but even harder to maintain! A change even in one of the utilities can lead to temporary inoperability of the entire system and require additional integrations - that is, costs.
AIOps is a new approach to IT management. It appeared as a response to the challenges that modern companies face when trying to solve new problems with old means, integrate disparate tools, and so on. At the heart of the AIOps concept is the application of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to those massive amounts of data about IT services and the infrastructure that supports them. When properly implemented, AIOps should help IT departments automate IT, improve infrastructure efficiency and manageability.
At the same time, according to research by Gartner, only 5% of companies noted that AIOps is part of their IT strategy in 2018. However, the situation has changed a lot over the years, and analysts suggest that by 2023, 30% will be AIOps showcases. Analysts are confident that organizations that lack the resources or skills to build an AIOps framework will use third-party AIOps platforms. Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that BCC Research projects the global AIOps market to grow from $ 3 billion in 2021 to $ 9.4 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 26%.
AIOps creates Exceptional Service Provider (MSP) capabilities. As a dedicated IT company, every provider can reap many benefits from using AIOps: lower costs, better service delivery, increased cybersecurity ... and ultimately deliver AIOps to their customers.
What is AIOps and how does it work?
AIOps according to Gartner
The concept (and practice) of AIOps aims to go beyond sprawling API-based toolsets and integrations to create a unified and centralized framework for managing the entire infrastructure. According to Garnter, the key benefits of this approach are:
- Continuous and automated asset discovery and network topology control: AIOps enables complete real-time inventory of all infrastructure, including assets, accounts, systems, and more, and track dependencies between these objects.
- Complete transparency: AIOps offers a single view of the “whole truth” about IT processes. The system must share data with all stakeholders, and can also act as a collaboration platform for different teams. When implemented correctly, AIOps can find new opportunities for automating processes, eliminating manual tasks and increasing efficiency.
- Useful analytics and visualizations: AIOps aims to collect data from any number of sources, including monitoring systems and scanners. The meaning of this aggregation is the normalization of information and the formation of a unified model for representing data about the infrastructure. With a balanced approach to indicators and metrics, AIOps opens up opportunities for advanced analytics and visualization of system performance and health. In addition, AIOps allows you to quickly deal with various incidents.
AIOps - benefits for service companies and departments
Efficient service delivery has always been a critical task for any provider, but today it is also true for internal departments of companies. A well-functioning infrastructure is becoming a key factor in increasing margins and customer loyalty at the same time. Key benefits that AIOps brings to service providers and IT providers include:- Reduce IT Complexity: Any AIOps framework already contains metrics, procedures, policies, and out-of-the-box process templates that allow even the most complex infrastructures and solution zoos to be best practices. AIOps helps not only find bottlenecks, but also take action to eliminate them, creating a single hub for the collaboration of various IT teams, such as developers and maintainers. This gives the CIO a set of metrics that are already mapped to each other, as well as a knowledge base that helps to put any system slowdown or service failure in context and quickly resolve current problems.
- Workflow automation: The AIOps framework collects information about all systems running on your network and monitors the execution of business processes. Therefore, with the help of AIOps, you can highlight the mastered candidates for automation - they become the most often repetitive processes. This approach works both for optimizing internal processes and for the tasks of external customers, for example, customers of service providers. AIOps involves analyzing both the current state of systems and the many log files that various systems create. This significantly reduces the time required to find ineffective process points and eliminate them.
- Real-Time Company Infrastructure Overview: The AIOps framework must continually update a complete real-time view of the company infrastructure in a fully automated manner. Physical servers and workstations, multi-cloud environments, various data repositories, applications, services, and so on - all this should be displayed on dashboards. Thus, the IT architecture becomes transparent to all employees and managers - from the newly hired system administrator to the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer).
- Business continuity and productivity growth: AIOps frameworks help maintain the most stringent SLA conditions for both internal and external users. AIOps allows you to set a baseline for performance and system health and immediately reports unusual behavior of any component. With this approach, most problems can be detected and eliminated before the end user even feels them - and in fact, in many companies, the response occurs just after user complaints. The AIOps framework implies fast troubleshooting and service recovery with RPO and RTO parameters close to zero.
- Get Value Fast: AIOps frameworks help improve IT performance and maintain high availability of services. This, in turn, allows users to focus on key business goals - creating new applications and services, increasing the level of service for customers, expanding the potential audience of their projects, and so on. This is much more profitable for the company than routine management and administration. Together with AIOps, IT can become a fulcrum for further business development.
- Differentiation from competitors: AIOps is still not a generally accepted practice, and similar systems can be found not in every service provider (although it would seem absolutely logical for them to implement such solutions). Therefore, users will definitely appreciate the high responsiveness of the application and services, as well as the high performance of the systems, which are natural consequences of using AIOps. And the reduction in maintenance and support costs can be both turned into additional profit and used to reduce the cost of services for users.
Why is it better to work for a company where AIOps is implemented?
The gap between the need for personnel and their availability has long been widely known. We just talked about this in the last post. For example, Russia lacks a million IT specialists, and according to Stanford's estimates, vacancies in the United States are filled by graduates with the appropriate qualifications by no more than 29%. But here, AIOps helps to cope with the problem. Among the advantages of the approach:- Faster adaptation of new employees: Instead of gradually mastering a complex and confusing IT environment, newcomers, regardless of their level of training, can quickly become familiar with the presence of a single interface for managing all processes that is a characteristic feature of any AIOps system ... No, this, of course, does not mean that you can hire “just anyone”, but the training process and costs for it can definitely be reduced.
- Reduced Routine Work: Higher levels of automation with AIOps frees IT staff from a lot of manual work. This helps to save the resources of specialists, freeing them up for solving higher-level tasks, and also helps to reduce the number of errors associated with the human factor. AIOps frameworks already include workflow automation, such as service ticket and vulnerability management, recovery and compliance processes, reporting, and more.
- More resources for innovation processes: Of course, the main motivators for employment are salary and work schedule. However, many of you, I think, will be pleased to do something more interesting than routine processes. In particular, Gartner is confident that AIOps helps to start the development and implementation of innovative services and products, because the framework helps to see what exactly the needs of the company's customers are.
AIOps as a cyber security tool
Even if a company or department is not yet faced with the task of strengthening cyber protection, end users always expect that this or that service will be protected. We just recently wrote about this in our post about “Cyber Insurance” . And in this regard, AIOps gives ISPs and companies' IT services a whole host of interesting opportunities:- Data classification and monitoring: AIOps helps categorize data and classify the resources that collect and store it. Thanks to this, it becomes possible to apply cyber protection measures, which again will be distributed to storages according to the established policies.
- Early Detection of Certain Threats: The AIOps framework automatically creates a template for baseline user performance and activity. And real-time monitoring helps to detect any deviations and anomalies. With proper analysis (and for this it is best to integrate such reports with a cyber defense system or SEIM system), it becomes possible to detect malicious activity by indirect signs, and quite quickly.
- Dealing with Threats in Context: Suspicious signals about the state of systems can be correlated with data from other sources. This may include a company's own knowledge base or an external threat intelligence service. This approach allows you to detect threats that create real risks for the company and focus the efforts of the information security or IT team on working out the most risky vulnerabilities.
- Advanced Incident Response Capabilities: Automated AIOps processes let you alert the right people of suspected threats. In this case, the responsible person will immediately receive a description of the severity of the incident, the affected infrastructure segments (along with the dependent elements), and maybe even guidance for action to work out the threat. Platforms of this class continue to automatically control the work with each incident - there is a special protocol for this - up to the verification of the fact that all its consequences have been eliminated.
Conclusion
The fact that the traditional approach to IT is not suitable for the modern decentralized service delivery model is no longer in doubt. Users want to receive services on demand, subscribe on their own, and so on. Hybrid infrastructures also contribute to increased complexity. Digital transformation brings its own nuances, for example, creates shadow IT and leads to an increase in the number of tools, the use of which no one controls or monitors. And when IT processes become ineffective, the company is threatened with information security breaches.AIOps is one of the answers to the current need for further automation. And today on the market more and more solutions, if not built entirely on the basis of AIOps, then at least are created taking into account these new trends. For example, this is exactly what we do at Acronis.
