7 benefits of AIOps for organizations

It’s hard to open the headlines without seeing a technologist gush about the benefits of AI. But as a leader, you’re likely more interested in the practical side of AI rather than specific tools and trends. AIOps, or Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, is one way you can leverage the latest technology to meet your business goals.

As the name implies, Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations is the merging of these two separate fields into one practice. It uses artificial intelligence technology, machine learning, and big data to automate and improve traditional IT practices and workflows. Currently, AIOps is used in large organizations that also use DevOps or cloud computing.

AIOps sifts through large amounts of data and automates manual processes using artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and predictive analytics. This makes it easier for IT operations teams to resolve incidents before customers and business operations are impacted.

According to the IBM Global AI Adoption Index, one in three companies are using or considering using AI for the automation of IT processes. However, one of the biggest barriers to adoption is getting people to understand the benefits.

As technology evolves and grows more complex, AIOps cuts through the noise and makes it easier to manage everything IT. For your own knowledge, and to help you explain the benefits to stakeholders, below are seven perks of using AIOps solutions.

“Time is a resource,” says Wilvie Añora, Pluralsight author and co-founder and Strategy Lead of AtoANI. “So you need to take advantage of artificial intelligence. We have IT operations that sometimes are too repetitive and manual, and [we can] take advantage of automations there.”

Repetitive, manual tasks waste valuable time and often lead to more mistakes. Artificial intelligence for IT Operations automates tasks like error detection, alert analysis, and event reporting. When ITOps team members are free from these time-consuming responsibilities, they can focus on developing solutions and strategies, rather than simply detecting incidents.

Nothing negatively impacts revenue and customer experiences quite like prolonged downtime. AIOps helps team members identify, prioritize, and respond to incidents in real time. 

AIOps can even help identify potential upcoming issues, allowing teams to act proactively and resolve incidents before they lead to outages.

Happy customers equal a thriving business. In addition to helping with reliability and availability, AIOps tools can analyze data from user sessions and identify common challenges or roadblocks. You can then use this knowledge to make changes and optimize the user experience.

AIOps helps teams identify, analyze, and resolve vulnerabilities faster. Artificial intelligence and machine learning automate detection and pinpoint the root cause of the issue, reducing false alarms or false positives. As a result, team members can focus on remediating real threats. 

AIOps can also be integrated with other tools, such as a SIEM, to further analyze real-time data and detect cybersecurity threats.

Even with the Great Resignation in the rearview for many organizations, wider economic conditions present a new challenge: hiring freezes and layoffs. In either case, many organizations face a shortage of employees with the right tech skill set. 

AIOps isn’t a substitute for IT operations management, but with an upskilling program, it can help you make the most of the talent you do have by allowing them to work more efficiently.

AIOps is data and department agnostic. It collects data from multiple sources, and the resulting analysis isn’t tied to a specific team or use case. This allows everyone, regardless of department, to work off the same baseline information, fostering collaboration and decreasing resolution time.

Organizations can use AIOps to preemptively identify incidents and reduce the chance of costly outages that require time and money to fix. They can also use it to automate processes and improve efficiency and productivity, lowering operating costs as a result.

Check out our course Artificial Intelligence Essentials: AIOps.

How will you know if using artificial intelligence is right for your company's IT operations? By understanding the benefits and these potential challenges:

AIOps relies on data. If the data is inaccurate or incomplete, any actions or analysis on this data will also be incorrect. In fact, according to the State of AIOps 2023 report, data accuracy is the top concern for both enterprises and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) when it comes to AIOps platforms.

AIOps is a tool, not a magic solution. Organizations that don’t develop a strategy before adoption won’t see the anticipated results. According to a Gartner® report, “Over 60% of the surveyed organizations with a company-wide strategic implementation of AI achieve this success by using performance measures that are aligned with business outcomes or reflect a tangible return on investment.”*

AIOps implementation requires the big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning skills to go along with it. But only 12% of technologists are completely confident in these skills. In a Gartner survey, “73% of organizations had deployed hundreds or thousands of AI models. Despite this, some IT leaders can’t explain or interpret what their models are doing.”**

If you can’t hire technologists to fill this skills gap, reskilling and upskilling is one solution. In fact, a McKinsey survey found that nearly half of respondents are reskilling as a way of gaining more AI talent.

AIOps isn’t a replacement for your IT operations team—it’s a supplement that can enhance their abilities and streamline their workflows. 

But to do that, your organization needs a firm grasp on AI/ML and cloud computing. Reskilling and upskilling is essential to making the most of this tech. If you plan to use artificial intelligence and machine learning across your organization, you’ll also want teams in other departments, like finance, to gain tech fluency and understand the basic fundamentals of the technology.

*Gartner "Deliver Value to Succeed in Implementing AIOps Platforms" by Matt Crossley

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**Gartner "Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023: AI Trust, Risk and Security Management" by Avivah Litan, Farhan Choudhary, Bart Willemsen and Jeremy D'Hoinne