Skip to main content

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

Dennis Drogseth

In my last blog, I expressed my opinion that IT operations teams may be about to enjoy a renaissance rather than dismally fading away — but only if they adopt new ways of working, measuring themselves and interacting with business stakeholders.

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

In this blog, I'd like to discuss how technology investments can help smooth the way toward operational transformation with a few examples from recent interviews. More specifically, I'd like to focus on three key areas of innovation, all in some way related to Advanced IT Analytics (what some in the industry call IT Operations Analytics or ITOA):

1. How Advanced IT Analytics (AIA) can pave the way

2. How next-generation ITSM promotes AIA-relevant process improvements

3. How AIA and service modeling can become a magic combination

These three areas of innovation are, admittedly, far from a complete list. But hopefully they will offer you a provocative place to start for seeking out transformative IT technologies.

How Advanced IT Analytics Can Pave the Way

Probably one of the hottest, most diverse and most misunderstood areas of technological innovation is AIA. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most significant reason is that AIA is not a single market but a diverse landscape of options ranging from those bordering on traditional "big data" to those that are focused on real-time predictive insights with tiered approaches to data collection that typically include leveraging third-party tools. The variances here also embrace multiple use cases ranging from performance management to change and capacity optimization to financial optimization to integrated security concerns.

Here are just a few highlights from EMA's recent AIA research focusing on performance, change and capacity management:

■ AIA analytic heuristics range from anomaly detection to predictive trending to machine learning, to rule-based analytics to data mining — as just some examples. On average, our respondents wanted at least four different heuristics.

■ On average, respondents wanted their AIA investments to support 11 different roles (and many more stakeholders), including four domain-specific roles, four cross-domain roles (including executive IT), and three non-IT business roles.

■ The top three achieved benefits were with faster time to repair problems, faster time to deliver new services and more efficient use of cloud resources.

Quoting from a conversation earlier this year:

QUOTE #1: "The move [to advanced analytics] allowed us to unify our operations team with a single-pane-of-glass view and drill down so that we could share information more effectively. In the past, we caught only 3% of our problems proactively. Now that percentage went up to 88% … In effect, we are able to see everything we need to see to focus and resolve issues far more cohesively and dynamically than before."

How Next-Generation ITSM Promotes AIA-Relevant Process Improvements

Next-generation ITSM is in my view pivotal for both IT and IT operational transformation. So what are they? Next-generation ITSM teams are more progressively integrated with operations teams, more proactive, more likely to leverage and share analytics, more likely to provide workflows and automation that unify IT as a whole (as well as support enterprise business process needs), and more likely to provide meaningful metrics for IT efficiencies and governance than the more reactive ITSM teams of the past.

Following the AIA data path, we saw that 82% of our respondents indicated strong levels of ITSM/operations integration for shared advanced analytics!

Quoting from two other conversations earlier this year highlighting next-generation ITSM values:

QUOTE #2: "First and foremost we've been able to consolidate our processes for change, incident, and problem management across our entire operation by leveraging one single platform …"

QUOTE #3: "We've also enjoyed improved visibility into the impacts of changes on service performance and availability, so we can more quickly get to the root cause of many of the issues caused by changes and begin to automate fixes more consistently."

How AIA + Service Modeling Can Result in (at least a little) Magic

The AIA research showed that 96% of respondents wanted at least some level of modeled insight on interdependencies across the application infrastructure. Among the top three priorities were application-to-infrastructure, infrastructure-to-infrastructure, and application-to-application (application ecosystem) dependency insights.

Combining analytics with service modeling is a growth area in AIA, as analytics providers are becoming more effective in not only leveraging existing application dependency mapping solutions and even CMDB data, but also in creating their own unique approach to dependency modeling.

In another very recent dialog, I found some rather striking benefits when service modeling and analytics are combined:

QUOTE #4: "We estimate that we will be saving about $500,000 in the area of toolset consolidation … We were averaging 2.5 hours for MTTR … now it's about 38 minutes … You might say we never had eyes before. Now we have eyes."

In Summary

This is, admittedly, only a taste of what I've learned from research and conversations with IT about how technology can help to transform IT operations for the "brave new world" we live in. My focus on AIA, next-generation ITSM and service modeling was deliberate, as I see these as lying at the heart of the "operations renaissance." Also important are requirements for more advanced levels of automation and integrated support for security and operations. Superior digital experience management or end user experience management is also key.

The challenge in the market today is that while all these technologies are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, the innovations are coming from many different vendor sources. And true to form, many of these vendors are seeking to redefine the world around themselves in their marketing and messaging. Sorting through the pieces, and understanding where real value lies, takes time and patience and more than a little sober skepticism. But the innovations are real. And hopefully this blog can give you at least a hint — by category — of where to begin to look for them.

I deliberately kept the quotes anonymous on all fronts. If you'd like to see more information, then please check out our EMA library:

quote 1

quotes 2 and 3

quote 4

Image removed.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

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 ...

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

Dennis Drogseth

In my last blog, I expressed my opinion that IT operations teams may be about to enjoy a renaissance rather than dismally fading away — but only if they adopt new ways of working, measuring themselves and interacting with business stakeholders.

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

In this blog, I'd like to discuss how technology investments can help smooth the way toward operational transformation with a few examples from recent interviews. More specifically, I'd like to focus on three key areas of innovation, all in some way related to Advanced IT Analytics (what some in the industry call IT Operations Analytics or ITOA):

1. How Advanced IT Analytics (AIA) can pave the way

2. How next-generation ITSM promotes AIA-relevant process improvements

3. How AIA and service modeling can become a magic combination

These three areas of innovation are, admittedly, far from a complete list. But hopefully they will offer you a provocative place to start for seeking out transformative IT technologies.

How Advanced IT Analytics Can Pave the Way

Probably one of the hottest, most diverse and most misunderstood areas of technological innovation is AIA. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most significant reason is that AIA is not a single market but a diverse landscape of options ranging from those bordering on traditional "big data" to those that are focused on real-time predictive insights with tiered approaches to data collection that typically include leveraging third-party tools. The variances here also embrace multiple use cases ranging from performance management to change and capacity optimization to financial optimization to integrated security concerns.

Here are just a few highlights from EMA's recent AIA research focusing on performance, change and capacity management:

■ AIA analytic heuristics range from anomaly detection to predictive trending to machine learning, to rule-based analytics to data mining — as just some examples. On average, our respondents wanted at least four different heuristics.

■ On average, respondents wanted their AIA investments to support 11 different roles (and many more stakeholders), including four domain-specific roles, four cross-domain roles (including executive IT), and three non-IT business roles.

■ The top three achieved benefits were with faster time to repair problems, faster time to deliver new services and more efficient use of cloud resources.

Quoting from a conversation earlier this year:

QUOTE #1: "The move [to advanced analytics] allowed us to unify our operations team with a single-pane-of-glass view and drill down so that we could share information more effectively. In the past, we caught only 3% of our problems proactively. Now that percentage went up to 88% … In effect, we are able to see everything we need to see to focus and resolve issues far more cohesively and dynamically than before."

How Next-Generation ITSM Promotes AIA-Relevant Process Improvements

Next-generation ITSM is in my view pivotal for both IT and IT operational transformation. So what are they? Next-generation ITSM teams are more progressively integrated with operations teams, more proactive, more likely to leverage and share analytics, more likely to provide workflows and automation that unify IT as a whole (as well as support enterprise business process needs), and more likely to provide meaningful metrics for IT efficiencies and governance than the more reactive ITSM teams of the past.

Following the AIA data path, we saw that 82% of our respondents indicated strong levels of ITSM/operations integration for shared advanced analytics!

Quoting from two other conversations earlier this year highlighting next-generation ITSM values:

QUOTE #2: "First and foremost we've been able to consolidate our processes for change, incident, and problem management across our entire operation by leveraging one single platform …"

QUOTE #3: "We've also enjoyed improved visibility into the impacts of changes on service performance and availability, so we can more quickly get to the root cause of many of the issues caused by changes and begin to automate fixes more consistently."

How AIA + Service Modeling Can Result in (at least a little) Magic

The AIA research showed that 96% of respondents wanted at least some level of modeled insight on interdependencies across the application infrastructure. Among the top three priorities were application-to-infrastructure, infrastructure-to-infrastructure, and application-to-application (application ecosystem) dependency insights.

Combining analytics with service modeling is a growth area in AIA, as analytics providers are becoming more effective in not only leveraging existing application dependency mapping solutions and even CMDB data, but also in creating their own unique approach to dependency modeling.

In another very recent dialog, I found some rather striking benefits when service modeling and analytics are combined:

QUOTE #4: "We estimate that we will be saving about $500,000 in the area of toolset consolidation … We were averaging 2.5 hours for MTTR … now it's about 38 minutes … You might say we never had eyes before. Now we have eyes."

In Summary

This is, admittedly, only a taste of what I've learned from research and conversations with IT about how technology can help to transform IT operations for the "brave new world" we live in. My focus on AIA, next-generation ITSM and service modeling was deliberate, as I see these as lying at the heart of the "operations renaissance." Also important are requirements for more advanced levels of automation and integrated support for security and operations. Superior digital experience management or end user experience management is also key.

The challenge in the market today is that while all these technologies are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, the innovations are coming from many different vendor sources. And true to form, many of these vendors are seeking to redefine the world around themselves in their marketing and messaging. Sorting through the pieces, and understanding where real value lies, takes time and patience and more than a little sober skepticism. But the innovations are real. And hopefully this blog can give you at least a hint — by category — of where to begin to look for them.

I deliberately kept the quotes anonymous on all fronts. If you'd like to see more information, then please check out our EMA library:

quote 1

quotes 2 and 3

quote 4

Image removed.

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

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 ...