A survey of 400 IT operations professionals finds that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is prompting more organizations to reassess the platforms they use to monitor their IT environments.
Conducted by the market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of ScienceLogic, the survey finds that 39 percent of organizations are prioritizing the consolidation of IT monitoring tools.
Streamlining data and incident response with AIOps
Half of respondents said multiple disparate monitoring tools create data silos that result in longer incident response times and a fragmented user experience. Just under half (47 percent) of respondents indicated that their organization struggles to map all on-premises, cloud, and edge computing devices. As a result, they cannot achieve a comprehensive view of their entire infrastructure. Additionally, 39 percent struggle to automate complex repair workflows due to a lack of context.
Specific challenges include keeping an accurate configuration management database (57 percent), monitoring the health and availability of edge computing devices (52 percent), providing reports to executives (51 percent), and consolidating data to determine how a specific IT incident affected multiple business services (50 percent).
That lack of visibility creates a barrier to adoption for applying AI to IT operations (AIOps) for 38 percent of respondents. Less than half of the respondents (45 percent) reported that their organization is actively exploring AIOps implementations. However, nearly all acknowledged the potential of AI to address challenges in IT monitoring, alerting, and response. Nevertheless, roughly half (47 percent) said they struggle at least some of the time to understand their generative AI/machine learning root cause analysis. In comparison, 41 percent said they found it simply too complicated.
The survey finds that nearly half (48 percent) said they lack the skills and expertise required to implement generative AI. Additionally, 50 percent acknowledged that security concerns are a barrier to AIOps adoption.
Respondents identified several key priorities for the coming year. These include ensuring that monitoring services can effectively handle unexpected external events (45 percent) and adopting a more agile approach to IT service management (40 percent). Additionally, they emphasized the importance of adopting generative AI (40 percent) and improving application experience management (39 percent).
AI for enhanced IT monitoring: A game-changer for MSPs
Managed service providers (MSPs), of course, have long provided monitoring capabilities as a mainstay of their portfolios. Organizations are finding that the more AI models are exposed to relevant data, the better they perform. The challenge organizations encounter is much of the data needed to train those AI models is strewn across a complex IT landscape. On the plus side, the survey reveals that more organizations recognize their shortcomings in monitoring as they gain a better understanding of what it takes to leverage AI technologies effectively.
The rise of AI presents MSPs with an opportunity to engage customers in discussions about accelerating their transition to AI solutions. Ideally, they can position themselves as the key players in utilizing AI to tackle IT monitoring challenges.
One way or another, IT monitoring is evolving rapidly in the age of AI. It will be up to each MSP to determine how best to employ AI. However, one thing that’s certain is almost every organization is eager to determine how best to take advantage of an emerging technology they still don’t always fully understand.
Photo: Dikushin Dmitry / Shutterstock
