AIOps: Components and Use Cases

In today’s world, data are abundant. Everything is internet-based and it is almost impossible for any organization to handle the data manually. 

 

The growth of IT infrastructures, from static and predictable physical systems to software-defined resources that alter and reconfigure on the go, need similarly dynamic management technologies and procedures.

 

In this article, we learn about Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps), which combines big data and machine learning to handle and automate IT operations. 

 

 

Understanding AIOps:

 

Gartner was the first to invent the phrase "AIOps." It's the use of sophisticated analytics—such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)—to automate processes so that the ITOps team of a company can keep up with the pace that the company demands today. 

 

It is the process of using data analytics and machine learning to automate and optimize IT operations using big data. AI can automatically scan huge volumes of network and machine data to uncover patterns, allowing it to both diagnose and avoid current and future issues.

 

According to science logic, AIOps combines big data and machine learning to provide predictable results that aid in root-cause analysis (RCA) and reduce mean time to repair (MTTR). The ITOps can continually improve by offering intelligent, actionable insights that promote a higher degree of automation and cooperation, saving your business time and resources in the process.

 

AIOps is required for a successful digital transformation. And the drive for corporate agility comes at the expense of complexity, making it incredibly difficult for humans to stay up. 

 

While agility is essential for business innovation and consumer experiences, putting it into practice has resulted in IT workloads and procedures that are very ephemeral. Distributed architectures, multi-cloud, containers, and microservices, to name a few, have produced abundant, multi-dimensional data flows that create excessive noise and suffocate IT's capacity to identify and fix service faults.

 

AIOps platforms:

 

The scalable intake and analysis of data created by an AIOps platform combine big data and machine learning to enhance IT operations (MLOps). Multiple data sources, data gathering techniques, and analytical and presentation technologies can all be used at the same time on the platform. At the moment of intake, an AIOps platform must be able to both evaluate stored data and give real-time insights.

 

Gartner states the fundamental functions of an AIOps platform:

 

• Data is ingested from many sources, regardless of source or provider.

• At the site of intake, doing real-time analysis.

• Analyzing data that has been saved in the past.

• Making use of machine learning.

• Taking action or taking the next step based on data and analytics.

 

Component of AIOps:

 

Rather than a single application, AIOps is better defined as a collection of technologies that make up a platform. The features offered by today's AIOps platforms vary, but one thing they all have in common is that they leverage artificial intelligence to assist the duties and actions of an IT operations team.

 

Sumo logic has written an insightful article that states the basic components and features of an AIOPs software tool.

 

1. Aggregation of Data:

 

AIOps software gathers data from a multitude of sources inside the cloud infrastructure, including event logs, job data, tickets, and more. The elimination of data silos makes it simpler to keep track of IT infrastructure and correlate network events to find out what's causing them.

 

2. Real-time processing:

 

There are several commercial benefits connected with real-time data processing. Enterprise IT firms may use artificial intelligence to examine massive amounts of business data at scale and in real-time. As a consequence, these firms can respond to abnormalities or security incidents detected by their AIOps tool more swiftly.

 

3. Automation:

 

One of the major reasons AIOps technologies exist is to reduce the workload of IT operators, hence automation is one of their most significant aspects. AIOps may be used to do in-depth log analysis and find mistakes and abnormalities, as well as automate real-time testing of new software features and user stories.

 

4. AI and ML:

 

AIOps' distinguishing trait. Artificial intelligence implementations in AIOps software are targeted on "intelligent analysis" of vast amounts of data and the capacity to determine which situations necessitate a security alert and which do not. Machine learning makes use of predictive analytics to improve the AI application's capacity to detect abnormal network behavior over time.

 

5. Domain Algorithms:

 

Domain algorithms are unique to a certain sector or IT environment, and their content and structure are determined by the goals and data of that business. These algorithms describe the exact operational goals that artificial intelligence will prioritize.

 

(Related read: What is Intelligent Automation?)

 

Working of AIOps:

 

AIOps tools aren't all made equal. An enterprise should implement it as an independent platform that ingests data from all IT monitoring sources and operates as a central system of engagement to get the most value out of it. These are the steps that AIOps follows to work:

 

1. Selecting the data items that suggest a problem from the huge quantity of extremely redundant and noisy IT data created by a contemporary IT system, which frequently entails filtering away up to 99 percent of the data.

2. For advanced analytics, correlate and identify correlations between the selected, useful data items, as well as categorizing them.

3. Identifying the fundamental causes of difficulties and reoccurring issues, also known as root cause analysis, so that you can take action on what you've uncovered.

4. Notifying the right operators and teams, as well as promoting cooperation among them, especially when personnel is geographically scattered, as well as retaining data on occurrences that might help speed up the future diagnosis of similar situations.

5. To make solutions more precise and rapid, automate response and clean up as much as feasible.

 

Use cases of AIOps:

 

There are five use cases for AIOps. With the help of Splunk, we will discuss all of them below:

 

1. Performance analysis:

 

AIOps is a crucial use case for performance analysis, involving the use of AI and machine learning to rapidly acquire and analyze massive volumes of event data to pinpoint the source of a problem. Performance analysis, a critical IT job, has become increasingly sophisticated as the volume and variety of data has grown. 

 

Even as traditional IT approaches have embraced machine learning technologies, IT workers are finding it increasingly challenging to examine their data using traditional IT methods. 

 

By using more powerful AI algorithms to evaluate larger data sets, AIOps helps to overcome the challenge of rising data volume and complexity. It can anticipate problems and do root-cause analysis fast, frequently preventing problems before they occur.

 

2. Event correlation and analysis: 

 

The capacity to look through an "event storm" of several, connected alerts to the underlying cause of occurrences and determine how to repair it is known as event correlation and analysis. Traditional IT technologies, on the other hand, just deliver a storm of alerts rather than insights into the problem. 

 

AIOps automatically groups important events based on their similarities using AI algorithms. This relieves IT, staff of the task of managing events constantly, as well as reducing superfluous (and obnoxious) event traffic and noise. 

 

When an event is received, AIOps utilizes AI to combine similar events, focus on important event groups, and conduct rule-based actions including combining duplicate events, suppressing alarms, and terminating significant events.

 

3. Anomaly Detection:

 

The discovery of data outliers — that is, occurrences and actions in a data collection that stands out sufficiently from past data to imply a possible problem — is known as anomaly detection in IT (also known as "outlier detection"). Anomalous events are the term for these outliers. 

 

Algorithms are used to detect anomalies. A trending algorithm keeps track of a single KPI by comparing it to its previous behavior. The system issues a warning if the score becomes abnormally high. 

 

A cohesive algorithm examines a set of KPIs that are supposed to perform similarly and raises alarms if one or more of them deviates. AIOps improves the speed and effectiveness of anomaly detection. 

 

AIOps may monitor the gap between the actual value of the KPI of interest and what it should be once a behavior has been discovered.

 

4. IT service management:

 

IT service management (ITSM) is a broad word that encompasses all aspects of creating, delivering, supporting, and managing IT services inside a company. ITSM refers to an organization's policies, processes, and procedures for delivering IT services to end-users. 

 

ITSM benefits from AIOps in the same manner that it benefits other IT disciplines: by using AI to data to discover issues and help swiftly resolve them, allowing IT departments to be more efficient and successful. AIOps for ITSM may be used to monitor the IT service desk, as well as devices and other data.

 

5. Automation:

 

Before it's feasible to comprehend, debug, and resolve situations with legacy technologies, it's sometimes necessary to manually cobble together information from different sources. 

 

AIOps offers a substantial advantage in the capacity to collect and correlate data from numerous sources automatically, considerably enhancing speed and accuracy.

 

Conclusion

 

Although AIOps represents a major shift in IT operations, it isn't a revolutionary use of analytics and machine learning. Social media and applications like Google Maps, Waze, and Yelp, as well as online markets like Amazon and eBay, employ analytics and machine learning. These strategies are widely employed in contexts that demand real-time reactions to constantly changing conditions as well as user customization.

 

Because our positions have historically required conservatism, ITOps people are often hesitant to accept new technology. It is the responsibility of ITOps to ensure that the lights stay on and that the infrastructure that supports organizational applications remains stable. Henceforth, we learn about AIOps in this article.

 

(Also read: DevOps vs MLOps)