IBM has launched Watson AIOps, which uses AI to automate how enterprises self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time.
Watson AIOps enables organisations to introduce automation at the technology infrastructure level and is designed to help CIOs predict, shape future outcomes, focus resources in specific work areas and build responsive networks that can have longer run times. IBM made the announcement at its Think Digital conference. Watson is the AI platform of IBM, which answers questions using its computing prowess.
The pandemic has pushed more companies across the world to embrace digital processes as a large number of people work from homes. More tech means more unforeseen IT incidents and outages can cost businesses in both revenue and reputation, said an IBM statement.
Market research firm Aberdeen pegs an outage at about $260,000/hour. Similarly, IDC predicts that, by 2024, enterprises that are powered by AI will be able to respond to customers, competitors, regulators, and partners 50 per cent faster than those that are not using AI.
Rob Thomas, Senior Vice-President, Cloud and Data Platform, IBM, said the Covid-19 crisis and increased demand for remote work capabilities are driving the need for AI automation at an unprecedented rate.
Red Hat OpenShift
IBM’s new solution is built on the latest release of Red Hat OpenShift to run across hybrid cloud environments and works in concert with technologies of today’s distributed work environment, such as Slack and Box. It also works with providers of traditional IT monitoring solutions, such as Mattermost and ServiceNow, IBM said.
“In this new era of remote work, securely sharing and accessing files anytime, and across all your apps, is more important than ever before,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.
“The greatest challenge for organisations is one of alignment. Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield said that by using Slack with Watson AIOps, IT operators can effectively collaborate on incident solutions, allowing them to spend critical time solving problems rather than identifying them.
Take the instance of the airline industry, which is hit hard by the pandemic. “Working with IBM to apply its Watson AI technologies has helped us accelerate how we modernise our data science tool. We use AI to automate processes that result in benefits such as highly responsive customer care and operational topics,” said Roland Schuetz, Executive Vice-President and Chief Information Officer of the Lufthansa Group.
As part of the rollout, IBM announced the accelerator for application modernisation with AI, within the IBM’s cloud modernisation service. It provides a series of tools designed to optimise the complete application modernisation journey.