AIOps is a cat­e­go­ry of cloud-based soft­ware sys­tems that lever­age arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing to auto­mate and trans­form IT oper­a­tions. In my first post in this series on AIOps, I dis­cussed the spe­cif­ic ben­e­fits of inte­grat­ing this tech­nol­o­gy into your SAP oper­a­tions and BASIS admin­is­tra­tion process­es to shrink the time and effort required to detect, under­stand, and resolve inci­dents. I sug­gest­ed that with AIOps, you will not only crush your inci­dent mean time to res­o­lu­tion (MTTR) met­rics, but elim­i­nate frus­trat­ing rou­tine and mun­dane man­u­al process­es. Remov­ing those will allow IT teams to refo­cus their ener­gy and tal­ent on high­er val­ue-add func­tions like plan­ning and innovation.

But what are the pri­ma­ry busi­ness dri­vers used to jus­ti­fy invest­ments in AIOps? To make the busi­ness case for AIOps, we need to align the ben­e­fits described above to exec­u­tive-lev­el pri­or­i­ties. Here are four AIOps ini­tia­tive themes that will res­onate with your exec­u­tive stake­hold­ers and that can help you find a busi­ness spon­sor to serve as a cham­pi­on for your AIOps initiative.

Enter­pris­es are using AIOps to:

Mod­ern­ize Their IT oper­a­tions. No mat­ter what you call it (IT ops mod­ern­iza­tion, IT process improve­ment, IT pro­duc­tiv­i­ty improve­ment, or IT ops automa­tion), your busi­ness is under pres­sure to use resources more effi­cient­ly and cre­ate a learn­ing enter­prise. AIOps accom­plish­es both by trans­form­ing IT oper­a­tions to reduce major inci­dents, dra­mat­i­cal­ly shrink res­o­lu­tion time, and free up resources to focus on plan­ning and inno­va­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, AIOps elim­i­nates alert fatigue through dynam­ic behav­ior pro­fil­ing and intel­li­gent anom­aly detec­tion; makes sense of the vol­ume, vari­ety, and veloc­i­ty of data through AI-pow­ered inci­dent con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion and root cause analy­sis; and min­i­mizes tri­al and error reme­di­a­tion by proac­tive­ly iden­ti­fy­ing rec­om­mend­ed fix­es and automat­ing work­flows. In sum, AIOps auto­mates sys­tem per­for­mance and behav­ior learn­ing. It pro­vides a growth path for SAP pro­fes­sion­als while increas­ing their job satisfaction.

Regain Con­trol and IT Over­sight over Out­sourcers. Many orga­ni­za­tions out­source SAP oper­a­tions, which means ced­ing con­trol and the abil­i­ty to over­see them effec­tive­ly. Even if your out­sourc­ing part­ner meets the terms of your ser­vice lev­el agree­ments (SLAs), out­sourc­ing arrange­ments intro­duce many risks, unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, and hid­den costs for IT and busi­ness stake­hold­ers. If you grade ser­vice providers pure­ly on con­tract­ed ser­vice-lev­el attain­ment, your out­sourc­ing part­ner has no incen­tive to inno­vate and raise the bar. You end up default­ing to that oft-used proxy for con­trol and over­sight — the RFP dur­ing con­tract renew­al negotiations.

The good news is that a rel­a­tive­ly small invest­ment in AIOps allows you to take back con­trol and mit­i­gate these risks with­out los­ing the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of out­sourc­ing. AIOps pro­vides a win­dow into IT oper­a­tions per­for­mance that IT lead­ers can use to empow­er them­selves with the insights to keep their ser­vice part­ners hon­est. Vis­i­bil­i­ty and insight into IT oper­a­tions process­es and their under­ly­ing per­for­mance data and met­rics give you the basis to nego­ti­ate for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in your SLAs and year-over-year cost reduc­tions. Or, for exam­ple, they can help you push back on demands to add serv­er capac­i­ty if you can show that exist­ing resources are not being used efficiently.

Dri­ve Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion. By reduc­ing the need for band­width to deal with SAP inci­dent res­o­lu­tion, AIOps sup­ports dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion by allow­ing teams to focus on these new ini­tia­tives. By pro­vid­ing a base­line of SAP per­for­mance (the ​“before pic­ture”) that can help you set goals and expec­ta­tions for dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed process­es (the ​“after pic­ture”), AIOps can de-risk your trans­for­ma­tion pro­gram. After the trans­for­ma­tion, AIOps embeds mod­ern­ized oper­a­tions into your new­ly dig­i­tal­ized process­es to make sure you are always oper­at­ing in a Known Good State, which Fog­Log­ic defines as an envi­ron­ment in which you oper­ate with mean­ing­ful KPIs that your orga­ni­za­tion under­stands well and that can be mea­sured on demand. 

With AIOps, you will not only meet the business’s need for always-on appli­ca­tions, you will lead by exam­ple as you cham­pi­on dig­i­tal­iza­tion and free your lim­it­ed IT resources to deliv­er on addi­tion­al dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects.

De-Risk Cloud and SAP HANA Migra­tions. As in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion sce­nar­ios, sys­tem migra­tions to cloud envi­ron­ments or SAP HANA pose sev­er­al obvi­ous risks that you can mit­i­gate through AIOps. In this case, AIOps can empow­er your resources to focus on the migra­tion with­out get­ting dis­tract­ed by fire­fight­ing. You can also use AIOps to estab­lish base­lines for Known Good States before and after these migra­tions to achieve con­ti­nu­ity in ser­vice levels.

AIOps at the Cen­ter of Strate­gic Busi­ness Priorities

Your busi­ness cares about using mod­ern tech­nolo­gies to improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, main­tain IT con­trol, achieve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, and deliv­er on strate­gic projects like cloud and SAP HANA migra­tions. AIOps is an essen­tial tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port all these exec­u­tive pri­or­i­ties. Take the next step and learn about var­i­ous AIOps tools and how they fit into your SAP land­scape. For tips on how to nav­i­gate that process, look for an upcom­ing post in this AIOps series: Under­stand­ing the AIOps Tool Land­scape. For next post, I’ll dis­cuss con­cerns over ​“Is AIOps Going to Take Over My Job?” 

If you’re attend­ing SAP TechEd, reg­is­ter for ASUG Pre-Con­fer­ence Sem­i­nar, ​“Hands-on with SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er: Adopt­ing the Best End-to-End Strat­e­gy to Tran­si­tion to SAP S/4HANA,” Sept. 23 in Las Vegas. Addi­tion­al­ly, we wel­come all ASUG mem­bers to sub­mit their ideas for blog posts they want to write.