Understanding Software Defined IT Operations (SDITO)

In this article, we will discuss the overview of Understanding Software-Defined IT Operations (SDITO) and will emphasize key aspects of SDITO strategies and concluded with the need and benefits of Software-Defined IT Operations (SDITO). Let's discuss it one by one.

Prerequisite - Software Defined Everything

Overview :
Nowadays, IT companies invest most of their time looking after operations, running of their business which prevents them from increasing their productivity as a result of which the company vision of 'innovation' is blocked.  So we have to find something which can automate certain operations of vast events with high accuracy which can be useful in unleashing the real potential of the companies.

Software-Defined IT Operations (SDITO) :
It is a software-driven process that can be used to control the expansion of management requirements in the various infrastructural environments of IT sectors. SDITO can not only provide several functionalities to automate IT operations, but also it can act as a blueprint for manual procedures and hardware that were previously used for IT operations. Meanwhile, the standard IT procedures also acquire some automation, but it mainly focuses on software instead of the underlying hardware. With help of SDITOs, companies can reduce the time spend by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to diagnose, discover, predict and eliminate outages.

Key aspects of SDITO strategies :
Here, we will discuss the key aspects of SDITO strategies.

1. Based on system requirements the system makes intelligent decisions using advanced algorithms. The intelligence can be complemented using Machine Learning to understand incidents and responds with self-healing measures to sustain infrastructure and service health for end users. Instead of relying on humans, the software process and interprets data.
2. The IT operations are automated which were generally done by manual activities. Automated protocols are made to implement organizational policies where dynamic and complex IT environments are confined without changing the performance and infrastructural scalability. e.g. if a policy requires encryption of a set of servers and Devs requesting arrangement of resources to meet the request which falls within the same policy framework, then policy enforcement so go with effectively with infrastructural expansion.
3. Traditionally we used a ticket-based approach for infrastructure delivery, with Software-Defined IT Operation it is replaced by automation with compliance with organizational policy and governance framework. Since service delivery will be automated it will enhance service levels, performance, and governance standards.
4. IT teams generally fail to effectively synchronize infrastructural management responsibilities where changes are done repeatedly but manually, which prevents organizations from scaling resources in compliance with the governance policies and framework. By integrating software-defined processes IT operations, the entire lifecycle of IT service can be configured, managed, and maintained effectively and consistently.

Need of SDITOs :
These days IT sectors are being approached to set up modern applications and certain business services at an increasing rate. But it as we go to the cloud and hybrid IT environments, applications, and services are highly distributed and become more and more complex. This results in the ocean of numerous monitoring data, which is nowhere for humans to cope with it. So here comes these software-defined IT operations which can be a perfect replacement for traditional manual IT operations.

Aspects of SDITO :
Here, we will discuss the Aspects of SDITO as follows.

• Diagnosis with automation -
  IT teams spend a lot of time trying to figure out the main reason for service issues and in combination with complex hybrid IT infrastructure, it may lead to significant delays. We can use AI to recognize & track certain activities using both historical data and real-time analysis comparison which can fix the time issue.
   
• Issue Resolution - 
  With the help of machine learning and AI, SDITO can be used to identify the pattern in large data sets that show some service issues which may lead to future outages degradations. So by predicting these issues using SDITOs, opportunities can be given to IT teams to resolve these as a result of which service quality will be enhanced.
   
• Event prioritization - 
  Using Machine Learning we can arrange different services and incidents by recognizing key characteristics like business services, historical incidents which can speculate the impact of various business events. And at the end, IT teams get a clear and direct checklist, and they can proceed accordingly which matters to them the most.

Some Benefits of SDITO :
Here, we will discuss some benefits of SDITO as follows.

1. Some functionalities are beyond human capabilities, but they can perform beyond them e.g. in case of processing speed, endurance.
2. Since automated, it can reduce operation time to a great extent.
3. It can achieve a high degree of accuracy.