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Is IT Operations Going Away or Is It Enjoying a Renaissance?

The answer depends in part on how you define “IT operations”
Dennis Drogseth

It's safe to say that the role of IT Operations is changing, but beyond that there are countless opinions about just why and how. Lately I've been hearing a growing number of doomsday prophecies about how operations professionals are going away as they shrink in importance to managing an infrastructure already being replaced by cloud.

Others see only reactive, siloed professionals desperately in need of overlay teams (without strong operations roots) emerging somewhere between myth and reality.

Others see a dwindling role for operations in the age of microservices and containers, as development magically ascends to deliver full lifecycle application support.

And finally, and perhaps the most incontrovertible, for those environments with converged or hyper-converged solutions, the operations overhead is seriously reduced.

On the other hand, I speak to about 40-50 deployments a year centered on optimizing IT for service delivery. And in these dialogs I see a strong and consistent trend that isn't a move away from operations, but rather a deliberate transformation of how IT Operations teams work. These transformations include multi-dimensional IT service management (ITSM) integrations with the rest of operations, investments in advanced analytics and automation, team-directed approaches to improved process efficiencies, better data on governance and performance, and a psychological shift toward cross-domain, service-aware thinking.

These, in other words, follow in the tradition of the now much maligned term "Business Service Management" but are central in enabling a newly popular term "digital transformation" and ultimately impact all of IT, including development and the executive suite, as well as business stakeholders.

So which vision is correct? Gloom and doom or new levels of empowerment and rebirth?

As always, the answer is: it depends.

So let me examine this in a series of questions:

Question 1: What is IT Operations?

As I see it most often, IT Operations includes management for change, performance and service delivery across the full IT infrastructure and includes all domains except security, while sharing application performance issues with application owners and development. It also includes ITSM teams that typically report to the VP of Operations. Security interdependencies are on the rise, and EMA is planning a unique Q1 investigation of SecOps trends as my data and our security analyst indicate that operations and security teams are finally beginning to bridge the divide.

One of the "official" missions of IT Operations has always been to "run itself as a business." In parallel, EMA's research on digital transformation indicated that after the IT executive suite, "IT Operations as a whole" was most likely to oversee IT and digital transformation initiatives.

Question 2: What is the impact of cloud on IT Operations?

Generally, cloud, in all its various forms, has forced IT Operations teams to accelerate their directions toward more cross-domain awareness, superior investments in automation and analytics, and actually promoted more dialog with business stakeholders. (Of course cloud can have an opposite effect for operations teams unable or unwilling to recognize that they live in a new world order.)

Question 3: What about the growing role of overlay teams — are they reducing the role of IT Operations or enhancing it?

There should be little debate about the fact that "overlay" teams are on the rise, albeit once again they are defined in various ways by various constituencies. The mission of these overlay teams varies, of course, which is part of the challenge. It can range from "unified digital experience management across the full application lifecycle," to "cross-domain IT OpEx and CapEx asset optimization" or simply "optimizing the move to cloud" just to name three of the more prevalent. (By the way, EMA is about to get a lot of hard data on "unified digital experience management.") Moreover, these overlay teams typically are driven from the IT executive suite and include business stakeholders ranging from digital services managers and marketing, to LOB service consumers, to enterprise procurement, just to name a few examples.

In my conversations, these teams are critical in enhancing the role of IT Operations and helping it evolve into our "new age." However, this isn't to say these new directions are painless, smooth rides on chariots in the clouds. I routinely hear of staff being let go when they are unwilling to change how they think and work to support a full range of challenges from cloud, to mobile, to agile, to digital transformation. So I guess the answer here is a little bit of both, with the weight, as I see it, still solidly on "enhancement."

Question 4: What technologies most apply in supporting these "operational transformations?"

This of course could be a blog, or rather a book, in itself. But a very short answer would be to highlight advanced IT analytics, more effective levels of automation, multi-dimensional integrations between ITSM and operations, and advanced levels of user, customer and digital experience to inform on business outcomes and optimize IT operational performance.

I would also add that I see a strong tie between service modeling (in various forms) and analytics as a key growth area. At this point I'd like to mention a webinar I'll be doing on December 6: A Realistic Approach to Transforming IT Operations: Analytics + Automation + Common Sense. Please listen in if you can.

Question 5: Why did I write this blog?

While the webinar might seem to be the obvious answer, the original spark came from a whole host of dialogs with industry vendors indicating that, for various reasons, believe the sky is falling in on IT Operations. And in fact they often may be right, especially in those environments where IT Operations remains reactive, siloed, and lost in the past.

But my conversations (admittedly most often directed at technology deployments addressed in question 4) show a much more optimistic direction for IT Operations as a whole. What I feel is missing among the doomsayers is the understanding that new technologies are almost always additive, and in fact the current IT infrastructure and application landscape couldn't be more heterogeneous. What's needed most often isn't a pure, new way of working that magically replaces everything before it, but an investment in assimilation, governance and migration over time in which business objectives and IT objectives can meaningfully combine.

Read Transforming Operations, and IT as a Whole, with the Right Technology Investments

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Is IT Operations Going Away or Is It Enjoying a Renaissance?

The answer depends in part on how you define “IT operations”
Dennis Drogseth

It's safe to say that the role of IT Operations is changing, but beyond that there are countless opinions about just why and how. Lately I've been hearing a growing number of doomsday prophecies about how operations professionals are going away as they shrink in importance to managing an infrastructure already being replaced by cloud.

Others see only reactive, siloed professionals desperately in need of overlay teams (without strong operations roots) emerging somewhere between myth and reality.

Others see a dwindling role for operations in the age of microservices and containers, as development magically ascends to deliver full lifecycle application support.

And finally, and perhaps the most incontrovertible, for those environments with converged or hyper-converged solutions, the operations overhead is seriously reduced.

On the other hand, I speak to about 40-50 deployments a year centered on optimizing IT for service delivery. And in these dialogs I see a strong and consistent trend that isn't a move away from operations, but rather a deliberate transformation of how IT Operations teams work. These transformations include multi-dimensional IT service management (ITSM) integrations with the rest of operations, investments in advanced analytics and automation, team-directed approaches to improved process efficiencies, better data on governance and performance, and a psychological shift toward cross-domain, service-aware thinking.

These, in other words, follow in the tradition of the now much maligned term "Business Service Management" but are central in enabling a newly popular term "digital transformation" and ultimately impact all of IT, including development and the executive suite, as well as business stakeholders.

So which vision is correct? Gloom and doom or new levels of empowerment and rebirth?

As always, the answer is: it depends.

So let me examine this in a series of questions:

Question 1: What is IT Operations?

As I see it most often, IT Operations includes management for change, performance and service delivery across the full IT infrastructure and includes all domains except security, while sharing application performance issues with application owners and development. It also includes ITSM teams that typically report to the VP of Operations. Security interdependencies are on the rise, and EMA is planning a unique Q1 investigation of SecOps trends as my data and our security analyst indicate that operations and security teams are finally beginning to bridge the divide.

One of the "official" missions of IT Operations has always been to "run itself as a business." In parallel, EMA's research on digital transformation indicated that after the IT executive suite, "IT Operations as a whole" was most likely to oversee IT and digital transformation initiatives.

Question 2: What is the impact of cloud on IT Operations?

Generally, cloud, in all its various forms, has forced IT Operations teams to accelerate their directions toward more cross-domain awareness, superior investments in automation and analytics, and actually promoted more dialog with business stakeholders. (Of course cloud can have an opposite effect for operations teams unable or unwilling to recognize that they live in a new world order.)

Question 3: What about the growing role of overlay teams — are they reducing the role of IT Operations or enhancing it?

There should be little debate about the fact that "overlay" teams are on the rise, albeit once again they are defined in various ways by various constituencies. The mission of these overlay teams varies, of course, which is part of the challenge. It can range from "unified digital experience management across the full application lifecycle," to "cross-domain IT OpEx and CapEx asset optimization" or simply "optimizing the move to cloud" just to name three of the more prevalent. (By the way, EMA is about to get a lot of hard data on "unified digital experience management.") Moreover, these overlay teams typically are driven from the IT executive suite and include business stakeholders ranging from digital services managers and marketing, to LOB service consumers, to enterprise procurement, just to name a few examples.

In my conversations, these teams are critical in enhancing the role of IT Operations and helping it evolve into our "new age." However, this isn't to say these new directions are painless, smooth rides on chariots in the clouds. I routinely hear of staff being let go when they are unwilling to change how they think and work to support a full range of challenges from cloud, to mobile, to agile, to digital transformation. So I guess the answer here is a little bit of both, with the weight, as I see it, still solidly on "enhancement."

Question 4: What technologies most apply in supporting these "operational transformations?"

This of course could be a blog, or rather a book, in itself. But a very short answer would be to highlight advanced IT analytics, more effective levels of automation, multi-dimensional integrations between ITSM and operations, and advanced levels of user, customer and digital experience to inform on business outcomes and optimize IT operational performance.

I would also add that I see a strong tie between service modeling (in various forms) and analytics as a key growth area. At this point I'd like to mention a webinar I'll be doing on December 6: A Realistic Approach to Transforming IT Operations: Analytics + Automation + Common Sense. Please listen in if you can.

Question 5: Why did I write this blog?

While the webinar might seem to be the obvious answer, the original spark came from a whole host of dialogs with industry vendors indicating that, for various reasons, believe the sky is falling in on IT Operations. And in fact they often may be right, especially in those environments where IT Operations remains reactive, siloed, and lost in the past.

But my conversations (admittedly most often directed at technology deployments addressed in question 4) show a much more optimistic direction for IT Operations as a whole. What I feel is missing among the doomsayers is the understanding that new technologies are almost always additive, and in fact the current IT infrastructure and application landscape couldn't be more heterogeneous. What's needed most often isn't a pure, new way of working that magically replaces everything before it, but an investment in assimilation, governance and migration over time in which business objectives and IT objectives can meaningfully combine.

Read Transforming Operations, and IT as a Whole, with the Right Technology Investments

Image removed.

The Latest

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

More than half (51%) of companies are already leveraging AI agents, according to the PagerDuty Agentic AI Survey. Agentic AI adoption is poised to accelerate faster than generative AI (GenAI) while reshaping automation and decision-making across industries ...

Image
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Real privacy protection thanks to technology and processes is often portrayed as too hard and too costly to implement. So the most common strategy is to do as little as possible just to conform to formal requirements of current and incoming regulations. This is a missed opportunity ...

The expanding use of AI is driving enterprise interest in data operations (DataOps) to orchestrate data integration and processing and improve data quality and validity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) ...