Digital services are the backbone of a tech-driven world. They power everything from customer experiences to employee connections and business insights. As companies race to digitally transform, the number of these services is exploding. This puts a lot of pressure on IT operations to deliver more and more digital services and ensure they’re running around the clock. But with the surge in digital services comes a flood of data—logs, events, and metrics overwhelming IT operations. There’s too much data, too much complexity, and not enough time for humans to handle it all. This is where ServiceNow AIOps comes into play, keeping digital services running 24/7 and ushering in a new era of operational efficiency and reliability.
To jumpstart, let’s dive deep into the world of ServiceNow AIOps, its capabilities, and business benefits.
Breaking Down AIOps: What it Means and Introducing ServiceNow AIOps?
AIOps or Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations is a merging of AI and ITOps. With the power of machine learning (ML), analytics, and data science, AIOps automates and streamlines IT service management and operational workflows. More specifically, AIOps has the ability to detect and respond to operational issues instantly.
The term AIOps originated when the pace of innovation increased with the growing number of technologies. Earlier traditional IT operations worked on the strategy that if something breaks, we will fix it fast. The AI-driven mindset wants proactive solutions to address issues before they happen.
ServiceNow AIOps
ServiceNow AIOps works on three zero strategies:
- Zero outages with predictive analytics, and self-healing infrastructure.
- Zero physical footprint by moving everything to the cloud.
- Zero incidents reported with self-service AI-driven workflows.
ServiceNow’s Predictive AIOps doesn’t have to be told what to look for and what went wrong, instead, it can identify issues in your IT environment utilizing advanced ML algorithms. This allows for proactive anomaly detection, event correlation among anomalies to minimize noise, and enhanced context for identifying the root cause of issues, thereby reducing Mean-Time-To-Resolution (MTTR).
So, what exactly AIOps do?
- AIOps uses big data of multiple IT infrastructure elements, application demands, performance monitoring tools, and ticketing systems.
- Prevent issues and report to IT and DevOps for quick and proactive remediation.
- Automates issue resolving without human intervention.
- Slowdowns outages with end-to-end visibility and context.
- Break down data silos and monitors IT operations and services efficiently.
Common Challenges in IT operations Management
As technology advances at breakneck speed, IT teams face an array of challenges that hamper their efficiency and effectiveness. Let’s dive into some of the most pressing issues they’re grappling with:
1. Complex IT landscape
IT operations struggle with increasing service complexity and rising customer expectations for responsiveness and reliability.
2. Disparate Data
Fragmented tools and data silos prevent information from flowing across cloud environments and slow down decision-making processes.
3. Rapidly Changing Virtual Servers
With virtual servers rapidly spinning up and down and containers sharing operating systems to deliver microservices, operational challenges related to scalability, resource allocation, and security are introduced.
4. Emerging technologies
The adoption of emerging technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things), cloud storage, Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) adds layers of complexity to IT operations. Each new technology brings its own set of integration challenges, security considerations, and operational dependencies.
5. Lack of Visibility
Siloed data sources and disparate processes prevent IT teams from gaining comprehensive visibility into the entire IT environment. This lack of visibility hampers proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, and decision-making.
6. Inefficiencies Due to Manual Tasks
The absence of automation across IT operations leads to inefficiencies in routine tasks such as provisioning, monitoring, and incident response. Manual processes not only slow down operations but also increase the likelihood of errors and delays in service delivery.
7. Lack of Alignment
A disconnect between IT resources and business objectives results in a lack of alignment. IT operations may not prioritize tasks based on business impact, leading to misallocation of resources and delays in addressing critical business needs.
ServiceNow’s Holistic Approach to AIOps
When it comes to tackling the multifaceted challenges faced by IT operations, ServiceNow’s holistic approach to AIOps offers a powerful solution. By integrating advanced AI capabilities, it enhances the efficiency, visibility, and responsiveness of ITOM (IT Operation Management). Here are some of ServiceNow’s AIOps capabilities:
1. Event Management
Event management reduces noise by 99% by processing events, tags, and metrics. Using ServiceNow AIOps, it gathers data from monitoring tools and creates meaningful alerts. One of the solutions is to create service maps of IT infrastructure to provide visibility while understanding the impact of changes and infrastructure on services. Maintaining service maps requires a CMDB with automated documentation of software and IT infrastructure, linking data on people, processes, and technology. Configuration Management Database (CMDB) linking common data on people, processes, and technology. This helps identify service issues, analyze business impacts, and find root causes accurately.
2. Log Analysis and Anomaly Detection
Service outages create complexity. With ServiceNow AIOps automation capability you can raise alerts early and prevent server issues instead of fixing them once it occurs. AIOps analyzes behavioral patterns with the help of log sequences from different data sources. Besides this, you can represent your data via intuitive dashboards and track log alerts and anomalies.
3. Metric Analytics
Predictive AIOps acts as a smart assistant that monitors issues early, raising events against CIs when there is a performance anomaly avoiding service outages. It sets thresholds with the help of machine learning, reducing the efforts of manually entering thousands of thresholds. Metric Analytics allows you to collect raw data from ServiceNow Agent Client Collector and other monitoring tools. Moreover, it provides you with heat maps to visualize and analyze metric data.
4. Automatic Remediation
With Flow Designer and Integration Hub to create remediation actions called Playbooks, you can resolve issues like retrieving log files, freeing up disk space, restarting a service, or attaching a knowledge-based article to the alert. You can trigger tasks such as auto-closing alerts, changing requests, security incidents, field service work orders, and customer service cases.
5. Now Assist for IT Operations Management
The generative AI-powered Now Assist for ITOM simplifies complex alert information, providing a faster route to resolve issues. Now Assist is a robust platform built on generative AI capabilities, and Now LLMs (Large Language Models) provide more human-centric descriptions, causes, and corrective measures, ensuring security and privacy.
6. Intuitive Express List
With the help of an express list, you can conduct root cause analysis (RCA) and remediate alerts seamlessly for real-time updates, dynamic filtering, and an intuitive dashboard. You can take immediate and efficient actions for workflows on a single unified platform.
7. AIOps Dashboard
AIOps offers customized dashboards with intuitive visuals of data. You can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), track service health, and gain valuable context on the overall IT environment improving decision-making and ensuring proactive responses to issues. 
What Businesses Can Achieve with ServiceNow AIOps Capabilities?
ServiceNow Predictive AIOps is a powerful solution to connect every business process on a single unified platform. Whether you talk about customer service, operations management, DevOps, and SecOps, ServiceNow AIOps reduces the outages effectively. Let’s discuss key benefits of ServiceNow AIOps:
1. Eliminates Service Outages
Predicting and preventing service outages involves identifying potential service issues before they cause significant disruptions. This proactive approach helps in maintaining uninterrupted business operations and customer satisfaction. Early detection allows teams to mitigate risks, reducing downtime and associated costs, and improving overall service quality.
2. Enhanced Automation
Automation enhances operational efficiency by leveraging machine learning to handle routine tasks and complex processes. Automated systems reduce event noise, transforming events into alerts. ServiceNow AIOps pinpoint issues, diagnose root causes, and automate remediation, leading to faster incident resolution and fewer manual tasks. This streamlines operations, restoring services quickly and maintaining continuity.
3. Increase Employee Productivity and Experience
With a unified, intuitive interface, employees can easily identify, diagnose, and resolve service issues. This reduces the time spent on troubleshooting and allows employees to focus on more valuable tasks. The user-friendly design of the system improves the overall experience for IT staff, making their jobs easier and more efficient. Ultimately, this leads to higher job satisfaction and productivity.
4. Generative AI Capabilities
Generative AI significantly enhances the capability to handle and resolve service issues. It simplifies the triage process by providing concise summaries and analyses of alerts, making it easier for even less experienced agents to understand and address problems. AIOps reduces the time needed to triage alerts, enabling quicker responses and more accurate resolutions. By leveraging AI, you can ensure that IT teams are well-supported and equipped to manage incidents effectively, enhancing the overall IT service management.
5. Service Health Trackers
Service health trackers are essential for maintaining a high level of service reliability. By importing telemetry from APM (Application Monitoring) tools, you can define error budgets, service level indicators (SLIs), and service level objectives (SLOs). These metrics help in continuously monitoring the health of services and proactively addressing any potential issues. Policy-driven metrics ensure that services are reliable and meet performance standards, which is crucial for maintaining user trust and satisfaction.
6. Improved Incident Management
AIOps use machine learning and automation to resolve issues swiftly and effectively. By transforming events into actionable alerts and automating remediation processes, incident management becomes more efficient. Prioritizing alerts based on their significance ensures that critical issues are addressed promptly. This reduces downtime and enhances the overall resilience of services. Effective incident management is key to maintaining high service availability and minimizing the impact of disruptions on business operations.
7. Integration with Existing Systems
ServiceNow Predictive AIOps ensures that organizations consolidate events from multiple monitoring tools using out-of-the-box connectors and flexible integration frameworks. This seamless integration maximizes the use of current investments in monitoring tools and systems, providing a unified view of all events and incidents. It streamlines the incident management process, making it more efficient and effective. By leveraging existing infrastructure, you can avoid the costs and complexities associated with deploying new systems, ensuring smooth and efficient operation.
Become Proactive with ServiceNow Predictive AIOps and Aelum Consulting
It’s imperative for organizations to be more proactive than ever. In fact, enterprises are now going forward for more autonomous and self-healing digital services. ServiceNow Predictive AIOps are going to change the new digital reality of operations and services management. It addresses your operational challenges and brings the capability to run an uninterrupted service 24/7.
As a trusted ServiceNow Premier Partner, Aelum Consulting leverages cutting-edge technologies to revolutionize operational efficiencies. With over a decade of experience across telecom, retail, and manufacturing industries, we have a proven track record of transforming IT services and operations, reflected in a 4.6 CSAT score. Our team of 150+ ServiceNow certified experts is ready to implement and optimize ServiceNow Predictive AIOps for your unique needs, ensuring seamless, uninterrupted service and enhanced operational efficiency. Talk to our certified experts to know how ServiceNow can help you accelerate digital transformation.
Author Bio
Prabhjyot is a ServiceNow Technical Architect at Aelum, possessing deep expertise in ITOM, AIOps, ITAM, and CMDB. With over a decade of experience, he is involved in various offerings across industries, driving successful business transformations.