DEJ’s study Modernizing IT Operations for Digital Economy (scheduled to publish in July 2017) identified 14 key attributes of modern IT Operations. Additionally, DEJ analyzed the performance levels of participating organizations and, based on three key indicators, identified a class of top performing organizations (TPO) which represents the top 20% of the survey pool based on these KPIs.
Definition of TPO
As the next step in our analysis, we highlighted capabilities that are enabling these organizations to outperform their peers and industry averages. The research identified 21 technology and organizational capabilities that TPOs are more likely to have in place, as compared to all other participating companies.
Categories of TPO capabilities
1 – Predictive analytics capabilities – TPO are nearly 4 times more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
2 – Monitoring all key elements of digital/web experience delivery (availability, speed, content, integration, etc.) – TPO are 3.2 times more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
3 – Anomaly detection capabilities – TPO are 3.1 times more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
4 – Real-time analysis of streaming machine data – TPO are 2.6 times more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
5 – Ability to correlate application performance and business metrics – TPO are 2.2 times more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
6 – Automated root cause analysis – TPO are 92% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
7 – Automated resolution scripts and repetitive tasks – TPO are 89% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
8 – Ability to generate contextual alerts – TPO are 84% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
9 – Single platform for monitoring both on premise and cloud infrastructures and applications – TPO are 78% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
10 – Single data warehouse for all events and performance data – TPO are 72% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
11 – Ability to aggregate events data and alerts across entire infrastructure stack – TPO are 71% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
12 – Performance and security monitored through a single platform – TPO are 70% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
13 – SaaS delivery method for IT Operations Management solutions- TPO are 68% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
14 – Workflows defined based on facilitating collaboration between teams – TPO are 66% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
15 – Ability to recognize context and identify patterns of log events – TPO are 63% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
16 – Solution based on community knowledge – TPO are 59% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
17 – Ability to forecast changes in usage patterns to adjust IT resources – TPO are 58% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
18 – Single platform for monitoring all infrastructure elements and IT domains – TPO are 51% more likely to have this capability as compared to all others
In addition to the technology capabilities listed above, TPOs have three organizational attributes in common: 1) customer-centric culture; 2) seeing technology as a source of competitive advantage; 3) a well defined strategy for digitizing and transforming key business processes.
DEJ’s research collected data on current deployments and deployment plans for close to 100 management and organizational capabilities and identified those that have the most significant impact on performance. The list of TPO capabilities shows that there is more innovation in this space than vendors are given credit for, which is already causing a power shift in a competitive landscape for these types of solutions.
Also, looking at the list of TPO capabilities, three things become apparent: 1) most of these capabilities are fairly new and adoption rates have significantly increased over the last two years; 2) many of these are being deployed to reduce complexity and improve workflows of management processes; 3) IT Operations management is becoming analytics, data management and automation business.