IT Guide Find Your Path Autonomous Service Operations AI Orchestration Autonomous IT and Security
Automated and Connected IT You’ve done the work. And it shows. From the outside, it looks like you’ve got it all figured out. Other departments use you as the model. You’ve moved from chaos to control. Most service requests are automated end-to-end and your self-service portal actually gets used. But here’s what you know that no one else sees: you’re still playing defense.
Alt
The risk isn’t in moving forward.
It’s in staying where you are. If you stay here, you’ve hit the ceiling of reactive automation. You’re as efficient as reactive can be. But the next level, proactive, predictive, self-optimizing IT, remains out of reach. Here’s what’s blocking you: You’re still responding to everything. Monitoring catches issues early and automation helps you fix them fast, but you’re still reacting. Alerts fire, you investigate, you fix. Over and over. You’re quick, but you’re not proactive. You can’t predict what’s coming. Yesterday’s server degradation? You fixed it, but you never saw it coming. Will it happen again? Which system is next? You don’t know because you’re operating on alerts, not insights. Optimization and planning still require guesswork. You know there are inefficiencies and savings hiding in your environment, but surfacing them takes time you don’t have. And when the business asks if you can support 50% growth, you’re forced to answer with estimates, not data. Compliance and governance are still labor-intensive. You can prove what happened after the fact, but staying audit-ready requires periodic manual effort. Generating compliance reports means compiling data. Demonstrating control means creating documentation. It’s manageable, but it’s not automatic.
patty’s take “Responding quickly is great. Not having to respond at all because you fixed it first? Better.”
Patty
IT Wizard
Step 2
Identify your biggest problems Let’s get specific about your challenges. What’s hitting you the hardest? Think of the main issue you’re having that keeps you up at night. Read the four common problems below that IT teams face, and pick the one that’s causing you the most pain right now: Still reactive to incidents and alerts
Still reactive to incidents and alerts

This is you if:

  • Your monitoring catches issues, but then humans have to respond to every alert.
  • Alert fatigue is real: too many notifications, constant context switching.
  • The same types of incidents happen repeatedly (disk space, memory issues, performance degradation).
  • Every week, incident responses waste team hours that automation could have saved.
  • You’re fast at fixing problems, but you wish you could prevent them.
 This is my problem
Can’t predict issues before they happen
Can’t predict issues before they happen

This is you if: 

  • You catch issues when alerts fire, but you can’t see them coming.
  • Incidents surprise you even though in hindsight, there were warning signs.
  • You’re reactive (even if quick) instead of proactive.
  • There’s no way to predict which systems will have issues next week or next month.
  • You wish you could prevent problems instead of just responding fast to them.
 This is my problem
Manual tuning and optimization required
Mandatory manual tuning and optimization

This is you if: 

  • You know your environment isn’t optimized but lack time to improve it.
  • Resource allocation, cost optimization, and performance tuning require manual analysis.
  • You’re running efficiently, but not optimally.
  • Opportunities for improvement exist but identifying and acting on them is manual work.
  • You wish your systems could optimize themselves instead of requiring constant tuning.
 This is my problem
Compliance still labor-intensive
Compliance and audit prep are still labor-intensive

This is you if: 

  • Audits trigger a scramble to gather reports and documentation.
  • Controls exist, but proving them requires heavy manual effort.
  • Your audit readiness depends on periodic data pulls from multiple systems.
  • Compliance reporting works, but isn’t automated.
  • You’re constantly preparing for audits instead of staying audit-ready.
 This is my problem