With applications running globally, anytime/anywhere access, and the growing use of IoT sensors to collect data, traditional monitoring tools and human teams are struggling to manage the IT estate. They lack business context and real-time visibility at scale. This makes it virtually impossible to get valuable insight from monitored data to ensure the smooth running of systems, solutions and applications.
Technical and operations leaders must take back control of their business applications. They need to ensure everything is working and delivering as it should in terms of performance, security, and reliability. This is critical to meeting business goals if enterprises are to survive and thrive.
Currently, 72% of IT organizations already rely on nine different monitoring tools to support modern applications, but only 61% of the IT estate is monitored on average. It is little surprise, therefore, that nearly half of the IT department’s time is spent on troubleshooting instead of business-generating projects.
But it isn’t simply a case of adding more monitoring tools. This approach is unsustainable and decreases focus on what matters most to enterprises – growing their businesses. In response, at Orange Business, we are turning our attention from monitoring to “observability.”
An intelligent outlook on business applications
Intelligent observability will not replace monitoring tools. But, it does augment them by enabling enterprises to draw up a complete picture of the health of their entire IT and resolve any underlying problems. Intelligent observability also supports successful digital transformation.
Enterprises often fail with their transformation strategies because they are impeded by disconnected data storehouses and lack an understanding of the business context of IT. IT teams are left firefighting, prioritizing operational tasks over developing new revenue-generating features, for example.
Observability and AIOps working together
To help companies adopt intelligent observability, we recently introduced Service Manage - Watch. It is an intelligent, proactive global observability solution for both Orange-provided and third-party network services and applications.
Service Manage - Watch provides real-time visibility via a single dashboard or single pane of glass, integrating the expertise of our monitoring team to harvest data from monitoring tools. It relies on data lake analysis and AIOps (AI for IT Operations) to observe and generate proactive and predictive alerts on performance issues.
The AIOps component of Service Manage - Watch ensures that connectivity and security at the edge, applications, equipment, and user experiences are all performing at optimal levels to meet business requirements. We are harvesting data from many enterprises to train our AI. This extensive knowledge base helps customers keep their IT estates as fit and agile as possible.
We have had very positive feedback from analysts on our AIOps. GlobalData has described Service Manage - Watch as “a convincing and meaningful step on the path to delivering AI-powered automated networks.”
In addition to the predictive and personalized elements, the ability to apply Service Manage - Watch to multicloud gives us an edge over hyperscaler solutions, notes GlobalData. It allows us, as an independent cloud access aggregator, to offer granular service monitoring right down to the access level. This is something the hyperscalers can’t do today.
To achieve this, we have teams of experts in all areas, including cloud, security, infrastructure, and connectivity. This expertise is also hugely advantageous to enterprises that are in the middle of one of the worst skills droughts we have seen. They are finding it impossible to recruit the extensive capabilities required to optimize an IT estate internally.
It is our ability to innovate and reinvent concepts such as Service Manage - Watch that recently saw Orange Business named an Innovator top-tier provider in the Avasant Multisourcing Service Integration 2021-2022 RadarView.
Delivering top-level performance requires a platform re-think
Service Manage - Watch is part of our pledge to deliver our customers reliable, secure and top-level performance wherever they are. The optimized efficiencies have been carefully designed to support business outcomes from end to end. Core to this vision going forward is a composable, robust, high-performance open platform that can integrate emerging technologies, opening the door to agility, sustainability, and rapid innovation.
We are calling this our “Evolution Platform.” It goes beyond technical building blocks, delivering on our customers’ demands for personalized orchestration, flexible operating models, and modularity contained in a safe and secure environment.
Navigating an accelerated digital economy
The digital landscape is changing faster than we ever imagined it would. Industrial structures and business models are rapidly being disrupted. Agility, adaptability, and transformation are essential to respond to today and tomorrow’s business challenges.
By way of our Evolution Platform and innovative services such as Service Manage - Watch, we are deploying and supporting our customers with a seamlessly integrated, purpose-built IT ecosystem designed not only to promise, but to deliver on business outcomes.
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Franck is Vice President, Evolution Platform, a new strategic program focused on building the future orchestrated cloud-native infrastructure for our customers to ensure the delivery of real business outcomes. Outside his professional life, Franck enjoys cultural activities such as opera, especially Italian ones, and loves the theater. Sports also figure in his free time, especially cycling, running and skiing.