OpsRamp: Why AIOps is Critical to Business Success

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are driving new automation opportunities that will allow businesses to better and more efficiently conduct business. That is as true with the IT management domain as in any other business functions.  In fact, with demands on IT continuing to increase, the ability to leverage AI will soon be critical to successful operations.  Bhanu Singh, VP of Engineering at OpsRamp, will be speaking how businesses can effectively leverage AI at the upcoming AIOps Expo in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and I took the liberty to asking him a few questions about how the AIOps space is growing and the opportunities it presents.  Here are his thoughts.

Please tell us a bit about the latest news at your company.

In September, OpsRamp released OpsQ, the event management engine powered by artificial intelligence. OpsQ brings machine learning to alerting and incident remediation, using contextual data from monitoring tools and infrastructure to determine root cause analysis and escalate the proper alerts to the right teams.

In December, we released the OpsRamp Cloud Skills Crisis Report, which reports on survey research we provisioned around cloud skills that are most in-demand. We reported that a staggering 94 percent of hiring managers are struggling to find cloud-literate talent, even as over 60 percent of IT professionals mentioned that most of their applications are either built or run using hybrid cloud architectures.

What pains are you taking away for customers?

• Our service-centric AIOps platform uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to reduce data smog and alert floods that slow down incident remediation.
• Our hybrid infrastructure IT operations management platform consolidates infrastructure into one view across multi-cloud and on-premises resources.
• Our contextual pane of glass consolidates and integrates disparate point tools across the entire business for one single view of all data, in context. It replaces the resources required to manage these tools while providing a business-centric view.

How is cloud acceptance changing how your company or your customers operate?

With more cloud adoption in the modern enterprise, we continue to build out features and benefits associated with management of cloud infrastructure, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and function-as-a-service (FaaS).  Additionally, we are developing platform features for cloud-native architectures, so customers can monitor and manage microservices, containers, Kubernetes and service mesh.

What are the most important recent communications technology innovations in your industry?

Our industry is seeing greater consolidation across all disciplines, including IT service management, IT operations management, and communications. New collaboration platforms like Slack are emerging, and now monitoring has expanded into Unified Communications, including the monitoring of business interactions.

How is mobile changing your business strategy?

Mobile has already become the interface of choice for many business activities, and most business operations require a mobile experience. Our customers are demanding mobile-first delivery of features for simplified management, regardless of location or device.

Do you think the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) companies will ever face serious competition?

Most of these companies have large a moat but a certain portion of their business is vulnerable to competition and cannibalism from other FAANG companies. Netflix, for example, faces competition from Google and Amazon.

How is open-source changing technology and how your company does business?

Open-source is fast becoming the heart of innovation in Silicon Valley. Most startups leverage open source technology stack to build product and solution. Our platform needs to be prepared to manage infrastructure under these requirements.

How can blockchain transform your industry?

Distributed ledgers can transform many things, including security in the form of encryption and key credential management. In our world of IT Operations, we see this as the most disruptive angle.

What implications does AI have for your business and your customers?

Artificial intelligence for IT operations, or AIOps, is one of the most disruptive technologies in IT operations today. With AI, IT operations can eventually work practically unsupervised as the system can learn the workflows associated with proactive monitoring, event management, configurations management, and automation. Our Top Trends for AIOps In The Modern Enterprise Research found that two-thirds of IT organizations are experimenting with AIOps. IT operations will soon be transformed by this technology.

What is the greatest opportunity facing your industry? 

As companies shift to DevOps and cloud-native architectures, and IT teams become more responsible for digital customer experiences, the pressure on IT operations teams to work efficiently and effectively is only increasing. This is our opportunity – we streamline and simplify IT operations for a modern, hybrid and cloud-native world.

What is the greatest challenge?

The Skills gaps (lack of cloud literacy and cloud-native engineering as companies move to cloud) and IT agility will drive organizations’ ability to accept and accelerate changes that their businesses and customers are demanding. AIOps can help with this, but it requires a high level of data quality, the right artificial intelligence/machine learning skills and a clear understanding of policy implementation to get value from AIOps-driven automation.

What do you hope to achieve at the event?

We’re attending to learn more about the work being done in AIOps across the industry and to understand today’s and future trends that will continue to drive our product roadmap and decision-making.

Why should your session be on the list of must-attend sessions at this year’s conference?

AIOps is only as good as the data that it ingests. Our session on data context dives into why this is true, and what AIOps practitioners should look for when building/deploying effective AIOps.

Please make an interesting prediction about tech in 2019?

DevOps and AIOps will emerge as the defining competitive advantages of the modern enterprise. This means that faster, more qualified data ingestion, analysis and decision-making will become more critical than ever.

Bhanu will be expanding on these points and many others at AIOps Expo.  He will be participating in a panel discussion on AIOps 101 to kick off this year’s AIOps Expo, at 9:00am on Wednesday, January 31, 2019.  He will also be presenting a session discussing effective AIOps and how to effectively leverage data.  “Context is Critical: How Richer Data Yields Richer Results in AIOps” will take place on Friday, February 1, 2019, at 10:30am.  If you haven’t yet made plans to attend AIOps Expo in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, there’s still time to register.

Edited by Erik Linask