New tools, new opportunities, new challenges. Maintaining operational resilience—the ability to withstand, recover from, and adapt to disruptions—is a critical challenge for organizations globally. A new report from Enterprise Strategy Group, “From Observability to Operational Resilience: Connecting IT and Business,” offers a fascinating insight into the real showstoppers for businesses today. Let’s delve into the findings.
1. The Ability to Prioritize Effectively Is Becoming More of a Challenge
Modern IT operations are increasingly complex, characterized by hybrid deployments, diverse deployment types, architectural diversity, third-party API dependencies, and the adoption of continuous delivery models. These factors create a highly heterogeneous and rapidly evolving environment that traditional monitoring tools struggle to manage effectively. The complexity not only makes it difficult to maintain operational resilience but also hinders the ability to align IT operations with business objectives. Organizations must navigate this complexity to ensure that their IT infrastructure supports their business goals.
2. Unified Observability Remains Elusive for Many
Despite massive investments in monitoring tools and observability platforms, many businesses struggle to maintain operational resilience and deliver consistent business value.
“The average organization juggles 11 different monitoring tools, each specialized for specific technologies, platforms, or domains, creating a fragmented view of their technology landscape. This tool sprawl has created a critical visibility gap, and 52% of organizations still lack full-stack observability.”
To tackle the complexity, organizations need a unified observability approach. This involves centralizing and contextualizing telemetry data streams, including logs, metrics, events, traces, and alerts, which are often collected by different teams using different tools. A unified observability platform provides a single source of truth, enabling teams to diagnose and remediate issues more efficiently. By correlating and de-duplicating alerts, this approach reduces noise and improves incident response, ultimately helping to align IT operations with business goals.
3. Integration With ITSM and Incident Response Is Key for Success
Integrating observability with IT Service Management (ITSM) systems is essential for achieving operational resilience. This integration allows for the automatic creation of incident tickets with the necessary context, reducing noise and accelerating mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR). It helps ensure that incident response is aligned with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and other business-relevant metrics, fostering cross-team collaboration and a proactive AIOps paradigm. By streamlining the incident response process, organizations can respond more effectively to issues and minimize downtime. For instance, when an alert is triggered, the ITSM system can automatically create a ticket with detailed information, helping ensure that the right team is notified and can promptly take action.
4. AI-Driven Automation and Insights Need to Be Utilized
Generative AI (GenAI) plays a pivotal role in transforming raw data into actionable insights. GenAI continuously analyzes contextualized telemetry data to identify early warning signs of severe incidents and known best practices for timely remediation. It provides conversational interfaces for stakeholders to gain insights through plain-language queries, generates tailored reports and dashboards, and optimizes infrastructure for cost and efficiency. By automating remediation workflows and suggesting proactive improvements to system architecture and operational processes, GenAI reduces human workload and enables teams to focus on strategic, innovation-oriented tasks. For example, GenAI can predict potential issues before they become critical, allowing teams to take preventive measures and avoid downtime.
5. Operational Resilience and Business Alignment Work Better Together
The ultimate goal of a unified observability and ITSM approach, enhanced by GenAI, is to achieve operational resilience. This means organizations can withstand, recover from, and adapt to disruptions, ensuring that IT investments deliver measurable business results. The framework supports continuous improvement, reduces downtime, and aligns technology initiatives with critical business services. By fostering a culture of proactive and data-driven decision-making, organizations can create a more reliable and efficient IT environment. For instance, a company that implements this framework can quickly adapt to new business requirements and market changes, helping ensure that its IT infrastructure remains robust and responsive.
A Three-Pronged Solution to Complexity
IT professionals face challenges managing the rapid increase in technology complexity and fragmented telemetry data streams. To address these challenges, the report proposes a three-pronged solution: unified observability, integration with ITSM systems, and the use of generative AI (GenAI).
- Unified observability centralizes and contextualizes telemetry data, providing a single source of truth and enabling efficient issue resolution.
- The integration of observability with ITSM systems automates the creation of incident tickets with necessary context, reducing noise and accelerating mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR).
- GenAI enhances this integration by providing predictive insights, automating remediation workflows, and suggesting proactive improvements, thereby reducing human workload and enabling strategic, innovation-oriented work.
Read the full report to gain a deeper understanding of how these strategies can transform your IT operations.
