AI in IT Operations: Maximizing Efficiency of the Digital Business

This IDC Perspective discusses artificial intelligence (AI) in IT operations and its ability to maximize the efficiency of the digital business. The transformative potential of AI and generative AI (GenAI) in IT operations and digital businesses is evident. The benefits of integrating AI in IT operations include enhancing efficiency, improving collaboration, enabling proactive responses, and showing better resiliency. However, IT leaders need to be proactive in implementing these capabilities. A thoughtful approach to data governance and tool selection is just the beginning. Partnering with the right managed service providers, developing new processes, and investing in the skill development of existing staff is essential. In addition, executives should keep an eye on the future of the digital infrastructure, which should be a road map to successfully supporting the digital enterprise. "As businesses become more digital and look to deliver high-quality customer experiences and operate 24 x 7 x 365 at scale, we cannot keep managing the back-end infrastructure at human scale. Intelligent management is needed where operations can scale with the help of AI and GenAI to allow the operations team to focus on adding value through new capabilities rather than running to keep still by constantly firefighting persistent issues." - Andrew Buss, senior research director, Europe: Future of Digital Infrastructure at IDC"GenAI is poised to revolutionize IT operations by proactively identifying and resolving issues, accelerating the pace of automation, and effectively addressing the challenge of a skills shortage. These advancements are expected to significantly enhance team productivity and yield substantial cost reductions." - Shahin Hashim, associate research director, Enterprise Infrastructure and Datacenter for META Region at IDC"Enterprises should ensure that managed service providers incorporate a risk management function, a multicloud management platform, and use of centralized IT organizational structure that can support federated requirements which collectively will ensure effective use of AI across the stack of technologies." - David Tapper, program vice president, Outsourcing and Managed Cloud Services at IDC"IT operations teams need to evolve to maximize the benefits of AI by investing in skills development of existing staff, new change management process, enhanced metrics, and expanded cybersecurity reviews." - Jevin Jensen, research vice president, Intelligent CloudOps at IDC