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Advanced IT Analytics, AIOps and Big Data - 7 Key Takeaways - Part 2

Dennis Drogseth

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.

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Advanced IT Analytics, AIOps and Big Data - 7 Key Takeaways - Part 2

Dennis Drogseth

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.

Hot Topics

The Latest

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

When most people think about cybersecurity, they picture firewalls, encryption, and access controls — technical tools designed to protect systems and data. But beneath the technology lies a deeper set of principles about trust, decision-making, and resilience ... The best leaders don't eliminate risk. They manage it intelligently. And in many ways, cybersecurity offers a surprisingly useful playbook for doing exactly that ...

Many organizations assumed their infrastructure strategy was settled. It had been implemented, optimized and built into long-term plans. Recent changes in technology and vendor consolidation are forcing a second look. Cloud outages and licensing changes have exposed how much dependency exists on a small number of platforms. As a result, organizations are reevaluating whether those decisions still hold up under current conditions ...

Edge AI is strategically embedded in core IT and infrastructure spending across industries, according to the 2026 Edge AI Survey from ZEDEDA. The research shows that 83% of C-suite and IT executive respondents say edge AI is important to their core business strategy ...