The modern IT operations team has a plethora of tasks on their hands; from bringing in technological streamlining to making sure existing systems are performing seamlessly, to monitoring the performance of applications and such. It is safe to say that the IT ops teams of today are very different from the ones that existed, say, 2 decades ago – both in terms of capability and tech-related arsenal.
For some reason though, regardless of how much better modern IT operations personnel may be than their precursors, they are faced with essentially similar problems and hindrances that the latter encountered in their day. The way said problems are approached may be different today, nevertheless, the problems still exist, and as we move into the second half of 2018, the necessity of mitigating the issues has increased tenfold.
Fortunately, with roadblocks come solutions, and ITSM training now contains more innovative solutions to persistent challenges, regardless of specific application and/or technology. To highlight the importance of effective ITSM training in today’s enterprise IT landscape, this article will shed some light on the commonly faced challenges by IT ops personnel, and explain how teams can be empowered for greater functionality and performance.
Lack of Targeted Data and Metrics
According to analytics experts, we are living in the age of big data, where the number of incoming metrics needs separate operations segment and personnel dedicated to it. Needless to say, the amount of data that can be received is huge; however, very rarely is it what an organization’s needs to hit the quarterly goals.
The lack of operation specific data is what keeps IT ops from turning it into valuable information, and finally, actionable insights. Granted that data, by definition, is supposed to be diverse and contain a variety of metrics, some of which may not be useful to the teams in play; it will be even better for IT ops to have clearly defined data coming in, which allows for more specific information and highly actionable insights.
The Solution:
IT training that focuses on targeted data collection to design the best possible solutions for better service delivery. ITSM and solution delivery can directly be impacted by just having a narrowing feature for the amount of data that comes in; a feature that can be developed once IT ops teams are trained for better service management.
Tools Becoming Difficult to Manage
Since the hybrid environment of today is much more complicated, the infrastructure has more intrinsic components, and technologies operate on completely different platforms, IT officials are having to juggle several new and complex tools at once. Traditional monitoring suites are no longer in action, and point solutions are the new norms too.
Tools such as Chef, Puppet, New Relic, AppDynamics, Jenkins and Pingdom have all replaced the older monitoring and delivery systems. Additionally, operations are consistently adding more instrumentation and tools into the ops mix, which adds more complexity as teams rarely focus on optimizing the tools to the new, custom environments.
The Solution:
Technology-specific training can help mitigate challenges related to various tools and how to maximize the potential that can be gleaned from them. Additionally, training can assist teams integrate newer tools into any existing systems.
Insufficient Agility
Every major and minor IT operations teams has the cloud in its sights, regardless of where they are located, and which specific tools and solutions they manage. Cloud ops are somewhat different from traditional operations, in that systems are often automated, and solutions are delivered with higher speed.
All of this requires an Agile framework in place which calls for faster code deployments and application updates. Agile development is something IT ops are struggling to implement on an enterprise scale.
The Solution:
Agile operations require a foundation of efficient IT functionality, which can be achieved by training that focuses on efficient solution management, with Agile development and delivery principles in mind.
Lack of Synergy between Management Tools and App Tech
The majority of management tools are constructed with very specific problems in mind. For example, the application performance management tools are designed to handle .Net and Java app code manipulation. However, these tools don’t address problems which occur outside the app code sphere.
Most enterprise apps are complicated and diverse, which require management capabilities which can single out issues that arise within the application, and assign the right tools to the job, while also developing custom solutions to address the commonly occurring issues.
The Solution:
To synergize application technology and the management tools built to handle aid application, IT operations teams need to be trained to identify key problem areas and develop solutions designed to not only target said areas, but also issues that could potentially affect lower level ops-sectors.
In 2018, and moving into the next year, IT training will become all the more important with the advent of technological innovation and updates to recently developed technology. To keep the IT operations teems up to date, and to developed the overall ops management in your enterprise, invest in IT Ops training today, to gain the competitive advantage and streamline how you build, deliver and manage IT solutions.