Many enterprises accelerated digital transformation and cloud adoption plans in 2021, in response to the changes in the workplace and business environment triggered by the global pandemic. The trend has required IT organizations to look for new ways to optimize IT operations and service delivery processes.
One big area of focus is artificial intelligence for IT operations, known as AIOps. Organizations looking for actionable insights from data generated by their IT assets and users of those systems have begun implementing—or are exploring the use of—AIOps. Cloud operations management, data management, resilience, and reducing the complexity of the technology environment have all become top items on the agenda for IT teams as well.
TechBeacon's top 10 enterprise IT stories of 2021 provide insight into the issues that IT organizations grapple with as they rush to support new digital transformation initiatives and cloud adoption. The articles offer advice and guidance that IT practitioners can use to better position themselves for success in the coming years.
1. Monitoring for network change: 4 use cases
Network downtime can occur when changes, such as software and configuration updates, are applied incorrectly. Network operating center (NOC) teams need to monitor for such changes and, when there's a problem, identify the cause so the network engineering team can fix the issue.
In this article, Michael Procopio, technology evangelist at Micro Focus, highlights four specific changes that organizations should monitor for: a change in the running state of network devices, unsaved changes, boot configuration changes, and software updates.
2. 4 things IT Ops teams need to know about data management
The way organizations use data has changed, and with that has come major transformations in database management infrastructure and practices. Organizations have moved from simple on-site relational and nonrelational data systems to cloud-native or widely distributed and complex arrays of databases designed for specific use cases.
The days when the data operations team and database administrators were primarily responsible for DataOps are over. Increasingly, data management is becoming an ITOps challenge, says David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting. In this article, he highlights four key things that the IT team needs to understand about data management in today's environment.
3. The new IT services model: Why you need to get product-centric
The growing complexity of modern business environments has exposed some of the limitations of the traditional IT model of delivering services in three layers, infrastructure, platform, and application. To be effective now, IT organizations need to consider every service they deliver as a product with a unique set of dependencies across the enterprise, says Lars Rossen, chief technology officer at Micro Focus.
Here, Rossen advocates why IT organizations need to approach services delivery the way manufacturing companies approach product delivery and offers advice about how to get there.
4. Cloud management headaches? How AIOps is a force multiplier
The shift to multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments has complicated the cloud management challenge at many organizations. Siloed management tools that were created to operate within their native clouds are no longer enough to manage the complex, widely distributed, and federated cloud deployments of today. Increasingly, organizations need a tool that sits above the various cloud brands and helps them manage private and public clouds via a single pane of glass.
David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting, describes why it's time for organizations to modernize their thinking about cloud management and consider technologies such as AIOps for cross-cloud management.
5. Why cloud operations management is the next big thing
The cloud migration and application modernization efforts of the last few years have left many organizations with a mix of multi-cloud or hybrid cloud configurations that are complex and hard to manage. Success depends on IT organizations having a well-defined CloudOps strategy for dealing with monitoring, performance, security, and problem management.
David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting, says it's time for a complete reset of CloudOps practices and explains why traditional approaches and technologies for operations are unsuitable for cloud deployments.
6. Ease into AIOps: A 4-step plan
AIOps technologies have matured to the point where organizations should consider adding the capability to their IT operations strategy, says Michael Procopio, technology evangelist at Micro Focus. In this article, he explains how AIOps started as an outgrowth of the big data concept and today delivers capabilities that help enterprise IT organizations analyze and review huge volumes of operation data to support critical decisions.
Procopio outlines a four-step plan that organizations can adopt to ease into AIOps. Steps include the need for organizations to observe everything and to ensure their AIOps integrations span all existing monitoring tools.
7. Build your digital transformation on these four pillars
For effective digital transformation, IT organizations need to focus on accelerating application delivery, reducing the complexity of the technology environment, strengthening cyber resilience, and implementing AI-enabled data analytics capabilities. Getting a handle on this task can be a complex and time-consuming endeavor.
IT organizations can end up implementing a jumble of disparate technologies if they don't build with a shared infrastructure in mind. In this article, Lars Rossen, chief technology officer at Micro Focus, explains how IT organizations can use the IT4IT Reference Architecture to lay the groundwork for digital transformation.
8. 25 Kubernetes experts you should follow on Twitter
Kubernetes has emerged as an extremely popular open-source technology for container management. Many organizations use Kubernetes for a wide range of container management jobs, including load balancing, storage orchestration, and automated rollbacks.
Numerous tutorials and other resources are available online to help IT organizations get up to speed on Kubernetes and keep up with the latest developments around the management technology. Here, freelance writer Mitchell "Moe" Long has curated a list of useful resources for leveling up your container management knowledge: the top 25 Kubernetes experts on Twitter.
9. Remote-work and burnout: 10 ways to avoid it on your tech team
The pandemic-triggered shift to remote work has significantly heightened stress for already overburdened enterprise technology teams. Some employees, anxious to retain their jobs in an uncertain economic environment, have increased efforts to make themselves always available to the job and have blurred traditional work/home boundaries in the process.
The result is that work-related stress levels among employees have gone up significantly and heightened the risk of burnout among many employees. Freelance writer and editor Linda Rosencrance speaks with multiple technology and HR professionals to compile this list of 10 best practices for avoiding employee burnout.
10. 4 reasons AIOps should be part of your digital transformation
Enterprise IT leaders are under growing pressure to demonstrate real value creation from digital initiatives. Organizations that accelerated digital transformation plans after the pandemic hit are now focusing on performance-driven milestones and how to provide sustained benefits that impact both their customers and revenue.
In this article, Prasanna Velayudham, IT transformation director for application management at Capgemini North America, highlights the use case for AIOps in digital transformation initiatives. He lays out four reasons why IT leaders should make it a priority for digital initiatives.
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