Part 4 outlines the challenges enterprise face when adopting AI observability. The main challenge is that AI complexity compounds at every stage of maturity. LLM-based applications introduce new behavior, dependencies, and quality considerations, while Agentic AI adds further failure modes as systems make decisions and take actions ...

Part 3 reports on the current state of AI observability. Most experts agree: enterprises are moving faster with AI than they are with the operational discipline needed to run it safely ...

When discussing AI Observability, one of the first questions that arises: Is this just an extension of traditional observability or is this a whole new type of tool? Part 2 compares traditional observability with AI observability ...

In this extensive 14-part series that will post over the next three weeks, experts across observability and AI will provide insight and opinions on the need for AI Observability, the challenges, the benefits, the current state, and predictions for the future ...

AI, automation, and enterprise software give organizations an extraordinary amount of leverage. Work that once required hours can happen in minutes. Information buried across systems can be analyzed almost instantly. Complex workflows can be coordinated across teams with far less manual intervention. That leverage creates a temptation to start with the technology ...

For more than a decade, the default infrastructure play has been simple. Move more workloads to the cloud, retire on-premises gear and treat the data center as a cost to shrink. That logic held while public cloud offered near-limitless capacity at predictable prices, and AI demand is now testing both halves of that assumption ...

Over the past year, enterprise leaders have begun asking different questions to inform their decisions on AI. Eighteen months ago, the topic was which model to use. Today, they want to know how to build an AI capability that will drive real, measurable outcomes. In fact, research shows that 86% of organizations are advancing agentic AI adoption and 62% have embedded AI into core business processes, yet only 51% can quantify the outcomes. It's easy to point fingers at the technology, but the reality is it's an architectural problem ...

Two years ago, almost every customer conversation about AI started with the same questions: Which model should we use? What can it do? Is it ready for the enterprise? Today, those discussions have moved on. CIOs are far more interested in how to govern AI, integrate it with existing systems, prepare their workforce and make it part of everyday operations. The challenge is no longer to prove that AI can deliver value. It's instead about how to embed AI into the business in a way that's secure, scalable and delivers measurable outcomes ...

AI is usually talked about as a software tool, but it also depends heavily on the network behind it. Whether a company is using AI for chatbots, automation, monitoring, analytics, or employee support, all of that information has to move across the network in a reliable and secure way. That means AI is not just an application decision. It is also an infrastructure decision. Before organizations rush into AI, they should ask a simple question: Is our network ready to support it? ...

As an analyst who researches how IT organizations design, build, and operate their networks, I find that network data is a constant source of pain. Network teams struggle with data quality, fragmentation, authority, access, and trust. And these issues undermine everything they try to do. Here are the numbers: Only 45% of network teams are completely confident in the accuracy of their network source of truth, which documents the intent of their network ...

Enterprise IT environments have never been more observable ... Yet many organizations still grapple with outages, lengthy incident resolution cycles, and increasing complexity. Most teams do not suffer from a shortage of data. They struggle to determine what deserves attention and what action to take next ... Enterprise IT operations must move beyond monitoring and visibility. The next stage of maturity is decision operations, an approach that helps teams make faster, better-informed decisions ...

Cloud outages are usually described as technical failures. When a service goes down, a dependency breaks, or a region has issues, the focus immediately shifts to infrastructure. But if you look closely at how these incidents actually unfold, the root cause is rarely the technology itself. It is almost always tied to decisions made earlier, during design, implementation, or day-to-day operations. The system behaves the way it was built. The real question is how it was built ...

The race to deploy AI is largely over. Most enterprises have entered it. The question now is not whether artificial intelligence is running inside the organization. The question is whether anyone is genuinely responsible for what it does. That is not a technical question. It is a leadership one. And most organizations are not yet structured to answer it honestly ...

The enterprises that will define the next decade are not the ones that deployed the most technology. They are the ones who understood what their technology was actually doing. That distinction is not a philosophical point. It is the central operational challenge facing every organization that has spent the last five years modernizing at speed ...

Many organizations describe AI as strategic, but they do not manage it strategically. When AI plans are disconnected from strategy, detached from organizational learning, and protected from serious assumptions testing, the problem is no longer technical immaturity; it is a failure of management discipline ... Executives too often tell organizations to "use AI" before they define what AI is supposed to change. The problem deepens in organizations where strategy isn't well articulated in the first place ...

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Seamless shopping is a basic demand of today's boundaryless consumer — one with little patience for friction, limited tolerance for disconnected experiences and minimal hesitation in switching brands. Customers expect intuitive, highly personalized experiences and the ability to move effortlessly across physical and digital channels within the same journey. Failure to deliver can cost dearly ...

In many organizations, IT still operates as a reactive service provider. Systems are managed through fragmented tools, teams focus heavily on operational metrics, and business leaders often see IT as a necessary cost center rather than a strategic partner. Even well-run ITIL environments can struggle to bridge the gap between operational excellence and business impact. This is where the concept of ITIL+ comes in ...

A payment gateway fails at 2 AM. Thousands of transactions hang in limbo. Post-mortems reveal failures cascading across dozens of services, each technically sound in isolation. The diagnosis takes hours. The fix requires coordinated deployments across teams ...