With greater observability, federal agencies can gain actionable insight into the performance of their IT systems and applications. And by adding AI to their IT operations (AIOps), they can supercharge their ability to apply intelligent incident detection and response in order to speed remediation and keep the mission on track, said Nathan Stacey, Senior Manager with Elastic.
AIOps: Improving Observability, Streamlining Operations
“Observability is the collection and coordination of something’s health via data,” Stacey said. “AIOps is an always-improving OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loop built from that observability. Just like turning the lights on in a room, the more data (light) and speed to search that data, the better the decision.”
App owners have astronomically more levers than ever to pull for better performance, cost, improvements and reconfigurations, Stacey noted. AIOps maximizes the value of these levers by having them pulled automatically. And once agencies tackle observability through the application lens, it’s time to turn attention to fullstack observability, he said. When agencies can generate insights throughout their IT ecosystems and cloud environments — public, hybrid, on premises and multi-cloud — they can minimize potential downtime.
Although not every agency will want to achieve full-blown observability immediately, most will at least be moving in that direction. A unified platform can support the effort, driving cost savings and tool consolidation.
And a unified platform offers agencies a single means to understand operational and mission data, context, and correlation across telemetries by making sure all systems speak the same language, Stacey said.
Detecting Hard-to-Find Problems, Supporting Collaboration
“Observability automatically combines different log fields so when there is a problem, we know what logs matter,” Stacey explained. AIOps looks at all of those logs, sometimes millions of them, and identifies anomalies related to the exact problem. “Where observability helps us see the needle in the haystack, AIOps removes the hay and hands us only the needles.”
With the same AIOps workflows at desks, in the field or at central operations, teams can collaborate and troubleshoot in real time. Each person needs unique access and data control to work together to resolve issues quickly; Elastic provides this role-based access, so data owners can share data with anyone they want, no matter their location.
“Elastic is built for common users trying to improve their missions and is easy to learn and configure,” he said. “Our speed and scale allow for limitless usage of observability data, and our flexibility allows limitless mission needs to matter inside the IT world, enabling users to bring as much IT performance as possible to the mission.”
Partnering with AWS, Elastic delivers search-powered solutions that help people find what they need faster while keeping applications running smoothly, securely and more productively, he added. That promotes system resiliency, as agencies that embrace solutions incorporating AIOps ultimately benefit from intelligent automations and domain-specific ML rules. And organizations with cloud monitoring solutions, Stacey said, gain real-time insights into complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
This article appeared in our guide, “Gearing Up for AI.” To learn more about AI’s transformative impact in government and prospects for 2024, download the guide here:
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