The ITIL community has been watching the development of AIOps with great interest. Many people in the industry are hopeful that artificial intelligence can finally solve some of the biggest problems that have been plaguing IT operations for years.
However, some members of the community worry. They are concerned that we haven’t learned from our mistakes, and that AIOps may not be able to live up to its potential. In this article, we’ll look at what the ITIL community is saying about AIOps. We’ll also discuss how it relates to the never-ending struggle around CMDB.
A Single Source of Truth vs. A Continually Changing Environment
The ITIL framework was designed around the idea of providing a “single source of truth” in the form of a CMDB. But modern enterprise IT environments make it impossible to keep a manual CMDB up-to-date. The rapid change cycles of agile DevOps, the remote work revolution, and “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies contribute to this tension.
On the other hand, IT operations teams have been struggling with data quality problems for decades. Emerging AI tech can’t magically change that. Technologies like automated discovery tools can help fill in some of the gaps. They are rarely able to provide a complete picture of your environment without significant human intervention.
People express frustration when they send out surveys or rely on engineers to manually update their configuration management database (CMDB). This is because there is no guarantee that information will make its way back into the system accurately and completely. As such, many people within the ITIL community see AI as a potential solution due to the technology’s discovery capabilities. But it will require both AI and human effort to achieve that “single source of information” destination.
AIOps: IT discovery magic bullet or magic beans?
The potential for AIOps to fill the gaps that exist in IT discovery is huge. By automating the collection of data and analyzing it using machine learning algorithms, AIOps can help organizations gain a complete understanding of their environment in ways that have never been possible before. However, there are also concerns about whether or not AIOps will live up to its hype.
Some people worry that AIOps will become another magic bullet that fails to deliver on its promises. Others are concerned that businesses will buy into the hype. They fear companies will invest in AIOps without realizing that they still need skilled human beings to make sure it is working correctly. Only time will tell if these concerns are warranted or not.
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AIOps and ITIL: Common standards vs. contextual data
One of the benefits of AIOps is that it can help organizations apply common standards to their IT operations – an early goal of ITIL. However, this doesn’t mean that AIOps will replace the need for contextual learnings.
Just as with CMDB, there is a danger of businesses implementing AIOps without really understanding how it works and what they need to do to make sure it is effective. For AIOps to be successful, businesses need to have skilled human beings who can analyze data and make decisions based on that data. Only then will AIOps be able to deliver on its promises.
ITIL and AIOps: Better Together?
There is still significant concern that the industry has not learned from its past mistakes. In particular, people worry that AIOps will become a black box where decisions are made without human intervention or oversight. As with all new technologies, it will be important to ensure that humans remain in control of AIOps processes so that they can maintain accountability and transparency. Only then will the ITIL community be able to reap the full benefits of this potentially transformative technology.
Do you see artificial intelligence (AIOps) as a potential solution to some of the problems you face within your organization? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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