The goal of EMA's latest research was to look at how advanced IT analytics (AIA) — EMA's term for primarily what today is best known as "AIOps" — is being deployed. Here are the remaining four of my seven personal takeaways.

Start with Advanced IT Analytics, AIOps and Big Data - 7 Key Takeaways - Part 1

For a much more focused exploration of the "IT analytic universe," one that's all digestible within 45 minutes (including Q&A), register for the upcoming EMA webinar on October 10.

4. Capturing interdependencies and CMDB/CMS

Capturing interdependencies and CMDB/CMS both stood out in importance. As an average, respondents sought to capture nearly five interdependencies across the application/infrastructure, while 54% of respondents viewed the CMDB as "extremely important" to their analytics strategy, a surprising valuation that correlated strongly with success.

The implications of this may seem to contradict notions that the CMDB is "old hat" technology. Rather, what's indicated in these findings is that CMDB/CMS and application/infrastructure dependency mapping are technology areas that are both being reinvigorated by AIA/AIOps investments, while also providing valuable contexts for leveraging and optimizing analytic insights for a variety of use cases.

5. Security on the rise

Security is on the rise. Priorities in cloud, vendor selection, heuristics, and best practices all indicate that security is a leading and largely integrated concern in advanced IT analytics, and AIOps in particular. This was not altogether a surprise given similar findings inEMA's 2016 research (EMA Research: Advanced IT Analytics: A Look at Real-World Adoptions in the Real World, March 2016).

Moreover, it is both a welcome and a much-needed advance, as the trend toward a true SecOps (security + operations) integration across IT organizations is becoming ever more critical given rising vulnerabilities, as well as the growing demand for OpEx efficiencies across IT.

6. Top-down is winning strategy

Top-down for everything is the winning strategy. It is also the most pervasive. The executive suite (VP and above) was more likely to be successful, and more likely to drive AIA strategies, deployment and purchasing decisions.

The reasons for this make sense once AIA/AIOps is understood as a unifying technology that can help to bring IT silos closer together with shared data and common insights. But to realize this advantage fully, process issues, organizational barriers and even habits of mind can be transformed through improved dialog and leadership.

7. Advanced analytics show strong evolutionary values

Advanced analytics are showing strong evolutionary values compared to prior years. EMA research from early 2016 and 2014 (EMA Research: The Many Faces of Advanced Operations Analytics, September 2014) indicate strong growth in heuristics, data sources, integrations, stakeholder roles, and overall versatility in terms of function and purpose.

The implications are that AIA/AIOps solutions are evolving dramatically in terms of functionality, use-case and breadth.

Here, the progress wasn't surprising, but the degree of progress in terms of hard numbers actually was.

… and there's a lot more.

There was no "spoiler's alert" at the beginning because the real proof of the pudding is the hard data and the many other insights that I plan on sharing during the webinar in October.

But hopefully you'll find some of the discoveries mentioned here intriguing, and as always, I welcome your thoughts and comments at drogseth@emausa.com.