Organizations across the world saw their business processes become severely constrained due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since physical workplaces were shut down, businesses found it hard to maintain business continuity. Organizations quickly started adopting the WFH (Work from Home) culture to maintain business continuity. This culture brought its challenges and organizations had to cope with them. One such challenge was to manage security & compliance remotely.

Challenges of remote working

The coronavirus outbreak brought unprecedented challenges. While most companies struggled with maintaining team coordination, communication, and performance standards, technical challenge further prevented business leaders from managing productivity. Most organizations did not have a dedicated IT infrastructure to handle remote IT operations. Hyper-automation and a dedicated remote working IT infrastructure became the most sought-after transformation and companies were quick to embrace newer technologies. AI tools in IT operations management were the best solution for managing remote working.

How AIOps helps remote working 

AIOps platforms use AI/ML algorithms to support IT operations and automate them. AIOps focuses on decreasing the need for human labor. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the demand for AIOps based analytics platforms. These platforms are seamlessly helping organizations adapt to the WFH culture by offering distinct features:

1. Remote monitoring 

The biggest challenge with remote working was to monitor the performance of software systems responsible for IT operations. CIO/CTOs would not be able to access the workplace IT infrastructure to monitor the performance of software systems. System monitoring can help identify the incidents within the IT infrastructure. AIOps platforms can implement rigorous monitoring of software systems without the need for human intervention.

AIOps can collect data from multiple and remote sources. The temporal data will then be analyzed to find any outliers or anomalies. You can identify incidents within your remote IT infrastructure and can resolve them to maintain business continuity. Real-time user monitoring tools can help in solving incidents faster.

2. Incident resolution

With AIOps, you can find the root cause of an incident easily. Even if the devices connected to your IT infrastructure are at remote locations, AIOps will still identify the incidents. An AIOps based analytics platform utilizes temporal data to identify incidents.

Upon the discovery of an incident, an AIOps platform will inform you about the IT team responsible for resolving it and provide actionable insights to resolve an incident faster.

If an event occurs twice within the remote IT infrastructure, AIOps platforms can remember it. Remembering an incident means they also recall the steps needed to solve it.

3. Hyper-automation 

Hyper automation for ITOps is automating all the processes except for those that can only be managed manually. You cannot invest in installing high-cost servers at each employee’s home to achieve better results. Firms are looking to automate IT operations to maintain business continuity in such times. AIOps platforms can help in automating several IT operations with their intelligent AI and ML algorithms. The costs for automating numerous IT processes may seem high in the beginning but will be beneficial in the long run.

4. Observability 

Besides monitoring the user experience, you also must monitor the performance of systems used by the employees to perform essential business operations. AIOps platforms help in enhancing the observability in user experience and the internal states of the software systems. Since your employees are working remotely, you must make sure that their software systems provide high performance. Low-performing software systems can result in lower productivity and higher downtime.

If an issue arises with any essential software system, AIOps can identify it even before an employee reports it. Enhanced observability with AIOps helps in digital experience monitoring. Firms use various digital platforms to connect with their customers. If an issue occurs with the user experience on digital platforms, AIOps can find it for you in advance.

5. Enhanced collaboration 

Communication has been a key challenge amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. DevOps teams are not able to remove the communication gap between the operations and development teams. AIOps platforms not only reduce the communication gap between IT teams but also allows east collaboration. Processes like feedback collection can be automated using AIOps. You can collect feedback from your employees and customers at regular intervals to understand issues with the IT infrastructure.

6. Security & Compliance 

Security & compliance is an indispensable business process for organizations. Firms are producing large volumes of sensitive data that need to be protected. Cybersecurity experts cannot visit the workplace to access security platforms. Remote work culture lets employees work from multiple devices and thus, safeguarding the business data gets even more difficult. If any data breach occurs, one cannot rush to the workplace for accessing the resources needed to solve it.

AIOps based analytics platforms identify the potential risks within the IT infrastructure in advance. You can automate the basic steps to follow if a data breach occurs with a reliable AIOps platform.

7. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)

Virtual desktop infrastructure solutions are in demand due to the COVID pandemic. VDI enables employees to work remotely and can access IT resources. Organizations can deploy computing capacity, enterprise applications, and other IT components on the devices of employees via VDI.

If there is a VDI desktop virtualization software system, its performance must be monitored. Data about the performance of virtual desktops has also to be analyzed. AIOps can help in managing your VDI and making sure the employees are provided with the computing capacity that they need. AIOps can monitor the user experience of virtual desktops to identify any issues. You can also eliminate any potential risks within the VDI with a reliable AIOps platform.

45% of businesses have already started using AIOps to ensure business continuity and remote monitoring of software systems. Even if firms cannot access workplace resources, they are able to maintain business continuity with AIOps.