Exploring a new age of AIOps to increase operational agility

Where should CIOs start when automating and orchestrating an IT Operations Automation Capability?

For CIOs and IT leaders, the complexity of managing large-scale IT environments has outpaced the ability of traditional operations to keep up, creating a landscape where manual management and disparate systems can lead to inefficiencies, security risks, and also limit agility.

We have already seen the way that DevOps approaches have helped to automate and orchestrate many manual deployment and sysadmin activities.

Now, AI tools give CIOs the ability to create smart systems that go beyond simple scripting and automation. This new area of AIOps holds a lot of promise for handling complexity, reducing cost and increasing agility for CTO functions.

Whether you opt to go with a vendor-led approach from companies like ServiceNow or compose your own services using AWS or other cloud providers offering AIOps components, the most important starting point is to be very clear about what capabilities you need and how they integrate with core systems, software, services and skills in the organisation. The tech alone is not enough.

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With this in mind, this playbook lays out an initial blueprint for such an AIOps capability, which you can adapt and build upon in your organisation.

IT Operations Challenges

Large organisations today face significant IT challenges:

• Distributed Infrastructure and Data Silos: With the shift to multi-cloud and hybrid IT environments, data is often scattered across various systems and geographies. This decentralisation introduces data inconsistencies, limited visibility, and redundant processes that slow decision-making. For CIOs, consolidating this fragmented infrastructure into a cohesive, automated system is essential to improve visibility and efficiency.

• Escalating Cybersecurity Threats: Hybrid IT structures amplify vulnerabilities across an organisation’s digital perimeter. As a result, IT teams grapple with securing data that traverses on-premise and cloud environments, with 82% of breaches involving cloud data. Automation offers a pathway to continuous security monitoring and rapid threat mitigation, enabling IT teams to defend the organisation proactively and consistently.

• Change Management Challenges: Frequent changes to IT infrastructure - whether updating software, deploying patches, or scaling systems - introduce risk and disrupt operations if not carefully managed. Without robust automation in place, IT teams encounter delays, approval bottlenecks, and a greater likelihood of errors.

• Legacy Systems and Scalability Constraints: Many organisations rely on legacy systems that hinder scalability and innovation, locking teams into cumbersome, inflexible technology stacks. IT Operations Automation helps modernise these environments by layering automation over legacy systems, enabling integration with modern tools and scaling operational efficiencies.

• Deployment and Infrastructure Scaling Difficulties: With today’s accelerated digital transformation timelines, IT departments face relentless pressure to scale infrastructure and deploy new capabilities swiftly. Manual processes are no longer viable at this scale. Structured, automated operations equip IT teams to meet growing demands with the agility and efficiency necessary to support remote workforces and dynamic deployment schedules.

An IT Operations Automation capability directly addresses these challenges, providing a unified, automated framework to simplify management, mitigate risk, and enhance IT agility. For CIOs, it is is more than an operational upgrade—it’s a strategic asset that empowers IT to transition from a reactive cost centre to a proactive enabler of business growth. This capability equips IT leaders to create a resilient, scalable infrastructure that adapts to the rapid pace of digital change and positions the organisation to achieve greater competitive advantage.

Let’s delve into the components of an IT Operations Automation capability and explore how this strategic priority can be developed to meet the demands of today’s complex IT landscape.

Identifying Key Components

Every digital business capability can be broken down into the ingredients and components needed - like a recipe - to help answer the following key questions:

• What components does the organisation already have in place, and which are missing?

• What related new technologies or initiatives are already planned?

• What services - and therefore skills - need an upgrade or re-training?

Expected Benefits

Implementing an IT Operations Automation capability enhances operational resilience, strategic agility, and cost-efficiency. Organisations leveraging automation across their IT landscape can not only reduce disruptions but also enable greater adaptability in managing complex, evolving IT environments.

Key measures of success include:

Increased Operational Efficiency: Automation significantly reduces the time and resources required to perform routine IT tasks, such as patch management, incident resolution, and system monitoring. As automation handles repetitive tasks, IT teams can focus on strategic projects. Efficiency gains can be measured by tracking reductions in manual intervention, processing times, and associated labour costs.

Improved Incident Response and Recovery: Automated incident detection and resolution tools quickly identify and respond to potential issues, often before they impact end users. Self-healing systems restore functionality autonomously, reducing downtime and improving service reliability. Key indicators such as mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to repair (MTTR) can demonstrate the positive impact of automation on incident handling.

Enhanced Scalability and Flexibility: Automation provides a scalable IT foundation that can handle fluctuations in workload without requiring a linear increase in human resources. Automated processes adapt dynamically to workload demands, ensuring that infrastructure performance remains optimal. Tracking resource utilisation and response times during peak periods will reflect the system’s ability to scale effortlessly.

Cost Reduction in IT Operations: By reducing dependency on manual intervention and optimising resource allocation, automation leads to substantial cost savings. Operational expenses decrease as workflows become more efficient and human error is minimised. Cost-effectiveness can be evaluated by monitoring reductions in operating costs, support ticket volume, and error rates over time.

Proactive Problem Management: Predictive analytics and AI-powered anomaly detection tools within the automation ecosystem provide insights into potential issues before they escalate. This allows IT teams to address issues proactively, rather than reactively, improving service continuity. Success can be measured by the frequency of proactive resolutions versus reactive incidents, indicating a shift towards preventative maintenance.

Read on for strategies to maximise the value of IT Operations Automation in your organisation.

Where to Start?

Building an IT Operations Automation capability begins with strategic planning and cross-functional collaboration. While IT leads the charge, successful implementation requires input from security, compliance, and operations teams to ensure automation meets broad organisational needs. An integrated Digital Leadership structure can be an effective framework to manage this coordination.

To begin, assess your current IT landscape to identify repetitive, manual tasks that consume time and resources. Focus on commonly automated areas like incident management, patching, and routine system monitoring. Prioritising these processes will help drive immediate efficiency gains. The planning phase can lead to some early quick win experiments:

1. Leverage Existing Investments: Before considering new, large-scale automation tools, explore opportunities within your existing IT ecosystem. Many IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms, monitoring tools, and security systems have automation features that may be underutilised. By maximising these capabilities, you can avoid the costs and disruption associated with deploying a new tool. This approach will also streamline adoption by using familiar interfaces, minimising the need for extensive training.

2. Conduct a Pilot with Built-In Tools: To validate the impact of automation, start with a pilot project that utilises the automation functions within existing tools. This could involve automating ticket routing in your ITSM system or configuring basic self-healing scripts for routine issues in your infrastructure monitoring tool. Testing these capabilities will provide a low-risk opportunity to measure the benefits of automation and identify further use cases.

3. Expand Gradually with AI-Driven Enhancements: Once the pilot is successful, consider incremental upgrades to include AI-based capabilities within your current tools, such as anomaly detection or predictive analytics, rather than investing in entirely new platforms. Many existing platforms offer plugins or modules for advanced automation that can further optimise your environment with minimal investment.

4. Align with Organisational Objectives: Ensure your IT Operations Automation efforts support broader business goals like cost reduction, enhanced resilience, and compliance. Regular engagement with senior leadership can help secure continued support, keeping the initiative aligned with strategic priorities and well-resourced.

After establishing the basics, teams can begin to build out a loops & layers led improvement plan.