ignio: Artificial Intelligence for IT Ops

By Bill Moran and Rich Ptak

Digitate

Figure 1 Artificial Intelligence for IT Ops   Courtesy of Digitate Indian multi-national Tata Consulting Services (TCS), created Digitate in 2015 to develop and deliver products based on the ignio™ Cognitive Automation platform. Today (November 2017), these include ignio for IT Operations, ignio for Batch, and ignio for SAP ERP. We think these offer significant value and benefits to IT. Here’s why.

An IT dilemma

IT departments face a dilemma. Their budgets are under severe pressure to deliver more with fewer resources.  Yet, they must also manage and undergo a costly digital transformation that CEOs are relying on to deliver new business opportunities. This dilemma is sharpened, and risk is increased as many of IT’s best people are unavailable because they are focused on firefighting to maintain the SLAs that keep existing customers happy. 

IT benefits greatly when such resources and people can focus on these challenges. This is where Digitate’s ignio products offer substantive assistance[1]. Over time, they “learn”[2] IT operations to allow automation of routine tasks and thus speed and facilitate problem detection and solution. As its knowledge builds, ignio more fully automates problem “find and fix” activities. Meanwhile, it greatly assists with problem resolution.

Determining problems in a complex environment is difficult and time-consuming. ignio can help but most IT shops will wisely choose to selectively implement the more advanced ignio capabilities. A careful plan, as we discuss later, will deliver many advantages by reducing risks and speeding the process.

ignio products

ignio for Batch and ignio for SAP identify their application targets. ignio for IT Operations is designed to deliver value across the whole range of data center operations. Each product can integrate with other installed monitors. Data sheets for each product are available on the Digitate web site[3]. Figure 2 shows the ignio platform architecture.

Figure 2 ignio Platform Architecture        Courtesy of Digitate    

Key to ignio’s value is the amount of out-of-the-box knowledge it has about the data center. It knows what a server is, what storage is, and has considerable knowledge about commonly installed operating systems. Inherent in ignio is >30 years of IT infrastructure technology that includes common knowledge about data center operations and IT infrastructures.

The process on how ignio addresses IT challenges has been carefully designed. Through Blueprinting, ignio first learns the environment to identify what is there and to determine “normal” behavior. Once ignio identifies “normal,” it can identify deviations. Then, it moves to analysis determining probable causes of the deviant behavior. Finally, ignio recommends or in some cases executes fixes which can be applied automatically. Such repair depends on the installation parameters.

During operation, ignio products follow a continuous cycle of Learn, Resolve, Prevent. The result is that operational models and the knowledge base are continually updated to reflect changes in the environment and operations of the data center.

In addition to being able to “Resolve” issues in the data center, ignio can automate routine tasks that used to take a significant amount of time. IT resources are stretched in most companies, ignio can help address typical employees requests quickly while allowing IT to tackle other more critical challenges.

In its “Prevent” phase, ignio will use the knowledge acquired of system operations to predict likely problems before they happen as well as model the effect of proposed system changes. Very significantly and attractively, we note that ignio does not use scripts. Therefore, staff do not have to deal with brittle scripts that are a nightmare to manage.

Suggested Action Plan

We recommend beginning with a study and evaluation of ignio. We found a wealth of helpful material on Digitate’s web site[4] from which to understand Digitate’s product offerings, their potential application in the enterprise, and decide on further investigation of ignio products.

After deciding to move forward with ignio, the next step requires creation of a business case and plan. Senior management judge will judge success by the amount of business value that a technology delivers. You can expect to deliver value in a reasonably short timeline. What is “reasonable” depends on the organization.

The planner needs to understand the organization’s significant problems. They must identify where and what the possibilities are for tangible organizational benefit. Too often, new technology projects fail due to lack of a properly documented business case with a well-defined use case that includes specific benefits enumerated and quantified. Review potential targets to identify which will benefit most from ignio. Avoid a project with a high risk of visible, disruptive failure. Effective application of AI is leading edge so set modest goals to start. Establish readily identifiable payback and quantifiable benefits.

Finally, identify potential pitfalls, setbacks, and difficulties. Then, determine how to address these. How will you recover if the original objective cannot be achieved?  This is a possibility, especially with new technology. Should you consider having Digitate Consulting work with existing staff on the initial deployment and training? Where are problems most likely to crop up? Who is affected by this? Where will objections/blockages occur? How can these be avoided/minimized? 

How long will the install take?

Digitate estimates that it generally takes 6 weeks for ignio to learn and become effective in

 normal operations. This can vary widely by customer[5]. Many installations operate a variety of “normal”. Day-time processing differs from nighttime. Weekdays differ from weekends. End-of-month, -quarter and -year have unique patterns. Some have periods when operations dramatically differ. For example, tax season stresses auditing firm IT systems; fourth quarter stresses retail IT. ignio continuously learns the business context during each period to build a complete model able to detect deviations. Select the initial project time-line accordingly as it may make sense to avoid a critical business period to avoid a catastrophic result.

ignio - Be aware

Currently, ignio does have some limitations. For instance, ignio has limited mainframe support. ignio for Batch will be able to analyze data from the mainframe, but it is not designed as a batch scheduler to execute mainframe’s batch jobs. That said, ignio for Batch can be very useful in certain environments. In our opinion, any shop running hundreds, or thousands of batch jobs would be well served to take a close look at ignio’s products.

Note that current operating system support includes: Windows, Linux, AIX, and Solaris. There is no support, currently or planned, for z/OS or any other mainframe OS.  We expect UNIX versions, like HP-UX, will be added over time.

The Final Word

ignio delivers a valuable, beneficial application of AI technology to IT data center operations. It will deliver worthwhile results to organizations that follow a careful plan for its implementation. Its products merit careful examination. It is new technology and should be handled as such, i.e. with careful management and planning.  

There will be many products using AI technology. Similar offerings are in the market that use AI, robotics, machine learning for cognitive automation in different ways. Offerings for process automation and optimization are available from companies such as Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, IBM, UIPath, WorkFusion, etc. Business and industry press, consultants and analysts discussing applications of AI and cognitive technologies will only increase management pressure for in-house AI projects.

ignio appeals to us because it offers key advantages to IT. Among the most significant is that their current products can be used in projects totally contained within IT where risk can be best managed. This allows IT to build knowledge and experience to respond to management questions about AI. A project to investigate and apply ignio products to IT operations appears to us to be a very good move.

TCS has a worldwide presence, deep pockets and highly regarded expertise in IT consulting. Digitate benefits as they leverage these in development and delivery activities. Successful, continued innovation in leading-edge technologies requires substantial on-going investment. Stable technical and financial backing benefits both Digitate and its customers.

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[1] There is an excellent video, an interview with Dr. Harrick Vin, the CEO of Digitate, on the design of ignio. See https://www.digitate.com/resource/interview-harrick-vin-birth-ignio/ There are other videos as well.

[2] We realize that we are using words that imply that machine learning is identical to human learning. This can be debated but we will use these words without prejudging the results of the debate.

[3] Find these and many more informative resources at: https://www.digitate.com/resources/

[4] See https://www.digitate.com/

[5] External events may also have to be considered. A disaster, natural or otherwise, can dramatically affect data center operations.