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Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just another trend – it’s a powerful force reshaping the very foundation of business operations.

Much like the internet catalyzed a global transformation decades ago, AI is now leading a new digital revolution. This wave of innovation is compelling organizations to reconsider, re-envision, and reinvent every aspect of their operational strategy.

AVP, global strategic alliances at NETSCOUT.

The goal is to fundamentally enhance how businesses manage their operational data, support critical human decision-making, and automate tasks that were once labor-intensive.

In years gone by, every facet of IT operations – from monitoring server health to scheduling workloads – required constant human oversight.

Now, with the advent of sophisticated AIOps solutions, businesses can automate a vast range of these critical functions, freeing up human talent to focus on more strategic initiatives.

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Modernizing and streamlining IT with AIOps

The primary driver for AIOps adoption is its ability to directly address the shortcomings associated with conventional IT management tools. While human expertise is invaluable in interpreting complex data, it can also lead to inaccuracies and inefficiencies, particularly when handling large-scale datasets.

AIOps platforms are designed to overcome these challenges. When fed with high-quality, relevant data, an AIOps system can quickly identify opportunities to improve decision-making and automate processes across IT operations, cybersecurity, and other network domains.

One of the most significant benefits is the enhancement of application performance and security. AIOps tools sift through the noise of immense data streams to pull out the crucial insights teams need to understand precisely what is occurring across their network and in their applications.

This provides a clear, comprehensive understanding of issues like performance degradation or system outages, enabling teams to make faster and more confident decisions.

For instance, cybersecurity teams can use this intelligence to detect anomalies, identify threat actors, and trace their activity within the network to find and remove them. It’s also well known that network and application performance monitoring creates vast swathes of data for teams to sift through.

However, using AI allows teams to automate a significant portion of data analysis, equipping them with credible indicators of performance problems and system outages.

This reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR) and allows professionals to focus on remedying issues instead of just detecting them.

The core components of an AIOps platform

At the heart of an AIOps platform lies advanced analytics, which serves as the platform’s primary engine. It moves beyond simple data reporting to generate actionable insights that feed automation protocols, thereby reducing the need to carry out repetitive tasks manually.

Building upon this analytical foundation is machine learning (ML), the “learning” core of AIOps. ML algorithms sift through immense historical and real-time datasets to identify subtle patterns and anomalies beyond human detection capabilities. These insights help refine automation and enhance system accuracy over time.

This powerful learning capability evolves into predictive analytics, marking the point where an AIOps platform begins to act proactively through enhanced network intelligence.

This is invaluable in a security context, as it helps cybersecurity teams stay one step ahead of adversaries by predicting likely threat movements in a given scenario – quickly stopping attackers before significant damage occurs.

Tying all these components together is real-time event correlation. In the digital world, every second counts during a performance issue or cyberattack, making acting fast a necessity.

Real-time event correlation automatically identifies relationships between events across IT systems to quickly pinpoint, address and resolve the root cause of problems, all without the delay of a manual investigation.

Quality data means quality AIOps

At its core, AIOps requires a constant stream of detailed, reliable data to power its engine – just as a high-performance car requires clean, high-quality fuel to run.

The efficiency and effectiveness of any AIOps platform are directly dependent on the caliber of the data it ingests. Accurate, contextual data is what enables these solutions to provide the precise insights, intelligent automation, and predictive capabilities they promise.

Conversely, if the input data is flawed, incomplete, or fragmented, the AIOps platform cannot correct for these deficiencies. The principle of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies here.

If a system is analysing fragmented data from different departments, it might produce conflicting automated actions, such as sending out contradictory responses to customer complaints.

In a more critical scenario, a potential cyberattack could be misinterpreted as a normal surge in server traffic that typically occurs during a seasonal peak.

This error could leave the door wide open for cybercriminals to infiltrate sensitive systems completely undetected. Therefore, a robust data strategy is not just a preference for AIOps; it’s the very foundation of its success.

Why AIOps adoption will continue to increase

The industry is taking notice of these powerful capabilities. Over 84 percent of organizations are currently using or planning to use AIOps to enhance IT operations – a clear indication of its growing value.

And it won’t just add value to one business area: teams across the enterprise – including ITOps, NetOps, and DevOps – can utilize AIOps to modernize their operations, strengthen observability, and bolster cybersecurity.

AIOps platforms’ powerful automation improves response times for a host of network performance and security issues, minimizing the need for time-consuming human intervention.

This, in turn, enhances profitability and improves overall team efficiency by reallocating precious time away from manual monitoring and toward strategic problem-solving and innovation.

To successfully implement a high-performance AIOps platform, organizations must prioritize data quality and value. This starts with robust analytics and effective filtering measures at the data source, ensuring only high-integrity data feeds the platform.

With a phased strategic rollout and a focus on accurate data, businesses can trust AIOps to boost operational efficiency and discover new growth opportunities in today’s quickly evolving tech landscape.

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AVP, global strategic alliances at NETSCOUT.