IT Operations Analytics

In the fields of information technology and systems management, IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) is an approach or method applied to application software designed to retrieve, analyze and report data for IT operations. ITOA has been described as applying big data analytics to large datasets where IT operations can extract unique business insights.^[1][2] In its Hype Cycle Report, Gartner rated the business impact of ITOA as being ‘high’, meaning that its use will see businesses enjoy significantly increased revenue or cost saving opportunities.^[3] By 2017, Gartner predicts that 15% of enterprises will use IT operations analytics technologies to deliver intelligence for both business execution and IT operations.^[2]

Definition

IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) (also known as Advanced Operational Analytics,^[4] or IT Data Analytics^[5]) technologies are primarily used to discover complex patterns in high volumes of often "noisy" IT system availability and performance data.^[6] Forrester Research defines IT analytics as "The use of mathematical algorithms and other innovations to extract meaningful information from the sea of raw data collected by management and monitoring technologies."^[7]

Applications

ITOA systems tend to be used by IT operations teams, and Gartner describes five applications of ITOA systems:^[8]

• Root Cause Analysis: The models, structures and pattern descriptions of IT infrastructure or application stack being monitored can help users pinpoint fine-grained and previously unknown root causes of overall system behavior pathologies.
• Proactive Control of Service Performance and Availability: Predicts future system states and the impact of those states on performance.
• Problem Assignment: Determines how problems may be resolved or, at least, direct the results of inferences to the most appropriate individuals or communities in the enterprise for problem resolution.
• Service Impact Analysis: When multiple root causes are known, the analytics system's output is used to determine and rank the relative impact, so that resources can be devoted to correcting the fault in the most timely and cost-effective way possible.
• Complement Best-of-breed Technology: The models, structures and pattern descriptions of IT infrastructure or application stack being monitored are used to correct or extend the outputs of other discovery-oriented tools to improve the fidelity of information used in operational tasks (e.g., service dependency maps, application runtime architecture topologies, network topologies).
• Real time application behavior learning: Learns & correlates the behavior of Application based on user pattern and underlying Infrastructure on various application patterns, create metrics of such correlated patterns and store it for further analysis.
• Dynamically Baselines Threshold: Learns behavior of Infrastructure on various application user patterns and determines the Optimal behavior of the Infra and technological components, bench marks and baselines the low and high water mark for the specific environments and dynamically changes the bench mark baselines with the changing infra and user patterns without any manual intervention

Types

In their Data Growth Demands a Single, Architected IT Operations Analytics Platform, Gartner Research describes five types of analytics technologies:^[9]

• Log analysis
• Unstructured text indexing, search and inference (UTISI)
• Topological analysis (TA)
• Multidimensional database search and analysis (MDSA)
• Complex operations event processing (COEP)
• Statistical pattern discovery and recognition (SPDR)

Tools and ITOA Platforms

A number of vendors operate in the ITOA space:

• Accelops
• Appnomic
• BMC
• CA
• CirrusPoint
• EMC
• ExtraHop Networks
• Evolven
• HP
• IBM
• ITRS
• Loom Systems
• Metafor Software
• Moogsoft
• Nastel
• Nexthink
• Riverbed
• Savision
• SAP SE
• SolarWinds
• Splunk
• Sumo Logic
• TeamQuest
• Unomaly
• VMTurbo
• VMWare
• Ymor
• Zenoss

External links

• ITOA Landscape: ITOA Landscape
• International Data Corporation (IDC): Service Management: Big Data Opportunities Abound for IT Operations Analytics (May 2014)
• NetworkWorld: Understanding big data analytics (July 7, 2014)
• Enterprise Management Associates (EMA): The Many Faces of Advanced Operations Analytics (September 23, 2014)
• ITOperationsAnalytics.net: The Basics of IT Operations Analytics

See also

• Application Performance Management
• Big Data
• Business intelligence tools
• Information technology operations

References

1. "The Time Has Come: Analytics Delivers for IT Operations". Data Center Journal. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
2. Fletcher, Colin (June 24, 2014), Apply IT Operations Analytics to Broader Datasets for Greater Business Insight, retrieved 29 September 2015
3. "IT operations analytics: Changing the IT perspective". Information Age. Retrieved 13 March 2014.
4. "Advanced Operations Analytics - What the Data Shows!". APM Digest. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
5. "Quintica offers BMC’s TrueSight". IT-Online. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
6. "Hype Cycle for IT Operations Management, 2013". Gartner. Retrieved 23 July 2013.
7. "Turn Big Data Inward With IT Analytics". Forrester Research. Retrieved 5 December 2012.
8. "IT Market Clock for IT Operations Management, 2013". Gartner. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
9. "Data Growth Demands a Single, Architected IT Operations Analytics Platform". Gartner. Retrieved 30 September 2013.