As advances in information technology continue to change how the world operates, organizations are finding themselves dedicating more time and effort towards their IT services. In many cases, the digital infrastructure—designed to support business operations and alleviate many operational tasks—is itself becoming a significant drain on resources. As such, understanding how to optimize these technologies and streamline their management has the potential to play a significant role in business success.
IT operations plays a central role in this scenario, ensuring that IT systems remain functional and efficient, while also fully aligning with strategic business goals.
ITOps can include everything from network operations to the overseeing of virtual and physical components within a company’s IT environment. With this in mind, it’s natural that IT operations managers and their teams have a broad set of roles and responsibilities.
But while organizations enjoy the freedom to establish their own definitions, roles, and responsibilities within ITOps, there are certain core functionalities common throughout most businesses. In fact, there are six classifications of IT operations tasks identified within the Disciplined Agile framework. Here, we outline these six classifications, and the activities that go along with each:
The primary purpose behind ITOps, running solutions includes performing data backups, configuring servers, and restoring systems after an outage or update. The purpose is to optimize the performance of these systems and allocate the proper resources where needed in order to be most effective with service delivery. Running solutions includes configuring, tuning, and allocating resources as well as restoring and backing up data.
Maintaining oversight of IT infrastructure - whether it is on-premises or in the cloud - is one of the key responsibilities of IT operations. Infrastructure is made up of computing, network hardware, software applications and cloud resources. Management of the infrastructure includes oversight of applications that are deployed in the cloud, cloud-data governance, network security, facilities management, hardware management, and the management of hybrid cloud environments.
IT operations teams are responsible for documenting solution dependencies and hardware configurations, while also implementing new configurations for optimal performance of IT services. Managing configurations also includes managing executable specifications, generated specifications, and document-solution dependencies.
IT is constantly evolving, and it is the responsibility of ITOps to ensure that evolution is directed by innovation and proceeds along a path that supports business priorities. Evolving infrastructure includes identifying ways to predict, prevent issues, identify impacts, apply software patches, and update hardware and software.
TOps teams often take the lead in disaster recovery plans - they organize and practice recovery processes to better protect the business from experiencing significant downtime as a result of emergent events. Mitigating disasters includes scheduling and conducting the simulation of random disasters and other problems, while also creating and sharing recovery strategies throughout the organization.
The ITOps team monitors the performance of the infrastructure, in addition to the security posture of the organization. Governing IT operations includes developing metrics to evaluate the performance of important services and processes, conducting infrastructure audits, managing software licenses, and issuing alerts.
Along with the six core classifications outlined above, ITOps has the general mandate to help defend IT operations from any and all potential issues. Advanced ITOps, which today includes predictive AIOps, is able to collect relevant data and turn it into actionable insights, allowing for easy identification of existing issues and early detection of potential future issues. The end result is a system for shoring up IT weaknesses and mitigating potential future problems, service degradations, and outages before they occur.
IT operations managers play a pivotal role in ensuring that the classifications addressed above are managed effectively and efficiently. These professionals oversee essential components of the IT landscape, from daily operational tasks to the maintenance of the physical environments that support IT infrastructure. Their work ensures that IT services are delivered efficiently and reliably. More specifically, IT operations managers are typically responsible for:
ITOps managers own the process for IT operations control, which is designed to control IT services and the underlying infrastructure. Daily tasks include workload scheduling, restoring systems after outages, and creating data backups.
It is also within the function of the ITOps manager to maintain and manage the physical environment that houses the IT hardware. This includes ensuring that the data centers and server rooms are properly ventilated and air conditioned to avoid overheating, and making sure that any back-ups are in place to maintain services in the event of a power outage.
The diverse responsibilities of IT operations encompass a range of crucial tasks. These include:
Network infrastructure tasks include managing infrastructure for internal and external IT communications, managing telecommunications, port management, remote access to networks for users, security, monitoring network health, and internal telephone system management.
Server and device management tasks include network and individual storage management, email and file server configuration and folder setup and authorization, PC provisioning, mobile device and cell phone telecommunications management, network and individual storage management, and device software licensing and management.
Tasks that fall within the computer operations and help desk category include managing the help desk, managing the data center, user provisioning, communications with network, auditing, computer operations, backups management, and managing the IT infrastructure library (ITIL).
Each of the aforementioned categories are also responsible for vendor and contract management, managing outsider contractors, project management and deployment, and repairing problems.
By streamlining IT processes and services, ITOps does more than simply support organizational capabilities; it enhances them. The following are some of the key benefits derived from correct implementation of ITOps:
ITOps significantly boosts the productivity of IT teams, and by extension, the entire organization. Providing clear, actionable data, ITOps accelerates issue resolution. This rapid response capability is particularly valuable in scenarios where IT disruptions can lead to extensive (and expensive) downtime.
Efficiency in ITOps is achieved through meticulous management of network and device operations—crucial elements in reducing operational complexities. This streamlined management allows for the effective use of IT resources, ensuring that every component operates at peak performance. The deployment of service management tools simplifies task management while ensuring that IT operations are more responsive to the needs of the business, thereby enhancing overall efficiency.
Employed correctly, ITOps facilitates informed decision-making by providing comprehensive visibility across the IT infrastructure. Monitoring tools, alerts, dashboards, and capacity planning all contribute to a deeper understanding of the IT landscape. This enhanced visibility empowers IT managers to anticipate potential issues and make strategic decisions that align IT performance with business objectives. Furthermore, analytics derived from ITOps activities enable ongoing optimizations and improvements, turning raw data into an essential strategic asset.
Reliability is paramount in maintaining customer and employee trust. ITOps focuses on achieving high uptime standards and swiftly addressing any service interruptions. Regular system updates, effective disaster recovery plans, and continuous monitoring of IT services ensure that all systems remain reliable and secure. For example, companies striving for near-perfect uptime can achieve this through diligent ITOps management, which systematically reduces the risk and impact of IT-related disruptions.
AIOps, or artificial intelligence for IT operations, integrates machine learning and big data technologies with IT operations to automate and enhance IT processes. By using AI-enhanced systems to analyze and interpret the vast amounts of data generated by IT systems, AIOps can predict potential issues, streamline root cause analysis, and optimize resource allocation. This allows for more dynamic and precise IT management, further reducing downtime and increasing operational efficiency while also significantly improving cybersecurity measures by identifying and responding to threats in real-time.
Incorporating additional technologies into AIOps further refines its capabilities. Edge computing facilitates faster data processing by bringing computation closer to the data source, which is essential for real-time analytics and swift issue resolution. Meanwhile, serverless computing can dynamically manage resource allocation, reducing the need for constant monitoring and manual intervention in system scaling. Together, these technologies empower AIOps to transform traditional ITOps by making it more adaptive, efficient, and capable of handling the complexities of modern IT environments.
IT operations management is a broad term that encompasses all the responsibilities involved in optimizing and employing services and technologies with an organization’s IT infrastructure. Application management, technical management, and service management.
This revolves around the more technical parts of managing applications, as they are necessary for supporting IT services within an organization. The application management team plays a crucial role in designing, deploying, operating, testing, and optimizing applications, while also possessing knowledge of programming that is important for code-level application monitoring.
Technical management provides high-level expertise for the strategic application of design management and supports IT infrastructure. An IT team may choose a technical lead or analyst for important technology areas. The purpose is to provide technical knowledge for lifecycle decisions.
IT service management (ITSM) focuses on the delivery and maintenance of IT services that support business processes. It works to align IT services with the needs of the organization and its clients, ensuring that IT operations contribute positively to business outcomes. This discipline often utilizes frameworks like ITIL to manage service provision effectively, from strategy and design to operation and continuous improvement. A well-known function of ITSM is the service desk, which acts as a point of contact between IT departments and the business, wherein users submit requests for IT services.
IT operations has a unique role when compared to the above functions, although they may overlap in certain areas of responsibility. The overarching goal of ITOps is to control IT services and keep them up and running, in addition to the configuration items that are required to deliver such services. Some organizations may divide their service desk into separate IT operations and IT applications help desk.
ITOps oversees the setup, design, configuration, deployment, and maintenance of the infrastructure that supports services. It has become one of the foundations of operational stability, as it provides an overall view of all managed aspects related to delivering the business mission. IT infrastructure is the technology that makes up the physical and virtual systems that provide processing, storage, and network capabilities that are necessary for services.
Adopting the cloud has emerged in the past decade as the predominant IT operations model, and it has completely changed how IT infrastructure is composed, used, and managed.
Public clouds are often an effective solution for cost optimization, flexibility, elasticity, scalability, and flexibility. However, many ITOps settings need private cloud solutions to provide compliance, control, reliability, and security—this tends to lead to a hybrid cloud model to leverage both options.
It is becoming essential to incorporate edge computing into the overall plan. Edge computing offers increased ITOps efficiencies, as it moves data processing closer to the source of data, which reduces response times.
ITOps and DevOps both support and optimize IT services in business, but the two terms are not synonymous. While both disciplines are designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations, they focus on different areas of the IT landscape and follow distinct methodologies.
As previously discussed, IT operations primarily focuses on maintaining the IT infrastructure's stability, security, and reliability. It ensures that IT services are always available and performing optimally to meet the needs of the business and its clients.
By way of comparison, DevOps combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to improve collaboration and productivity by automating infrastructure, and workflows, and through continuously measuring application performance. While DevOps also concerns itself with the operational aspects of IT, it is more project-focused, helping shorten development cycles, increase deployment frequency, and increase the speed of innovations. Unlike ITOps, which often has a broader, organization-wide scope, DevOps is generally more focused on specific projects or product areas, promoting a more agile development environment.
ITOps requires different operational approaches than what has been traditionally used. Businesses are discovering that it is crucial to move past legacy practices and embrace new trends. Digital transformation is an essential part of supporting the speed and resilience required of today’s modern business, as IT plays a principal role in the delivery of business services as well as the support of those services that are also customer-facing products. It is therefore more important than ever before for ITOps to align with business priorities.
For organizations hoping to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of IT operations, certain tips and best practices can be beneficial. These practices are designed to enhance the operational capabilities of IT departments, helping them to meet both current and future challenges effectively:
Teams should embrace new tools that are being incorporated into the infrastructure, and ensure that all of the right skills are in place for growth strategies.
ITOps must be capable of responding quickly to business needs, which means they need to organize activities and teams with a product-centric approach while avoiding traditional silos.
Wherever possible, employ automation to support the efforts of IT teams. Embracing IT automation eliminates low-value, time-intensive, and repetitive tasks, giving valuable professionals more bandwidth to focus on tasks and actions that more directly impact company strategic operations.
Metrics should be based around KPIs while focusing on the needs of the business and customers. A strong focus on KPIs helps ensure that all ITOps activities are aligned with the goals of business stakeholders.
Success in ITOps depends on a variety of factors. The ability to properly balance these sometime-competing elements is a defining determiner in the effectiveness of IT operations.
- Long term (strategic) vs. short term (tactical) goals.
- Organizational needs vs. operational needs.
- Operational efficiency vs. DevOps.
ITOps is a powerful approach to maintaining the reliability, efficiency, and security of digital services. That said, proper management tools are essential to navigate the complexities of IT operations. ServiceNow offers a comprehensive set of solutions, with IT Operations Management (ITOM).
Integrating advanced AIOps capabilities, ITOM provides predictive analytics that preemptively address IT issues before they can impact users. The suite of tools and resources includes features such as ITOM Visibility, which automates IT inventory and provides deep insights into business context, and ITOM Predictive AIOps for enhanced event management and metric intelligence. ITOM likewise streamlines the governance of IT resources, particularly in hybrid cloud environments. This ensures compliance and efficient management across cloud and on-premises infrastructures, significantly reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) and improving overall service reliability.
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