The increasing importance of IT operation and maintenance value reflects that the enterprise-level digitalization process has entered the deep water zone.
For example, anyone who has read martial arts novels will not be unfamiliar with such a plot: before the birth of the hero, he always got the “internal strength” of his predecessors by chance. However, because the “trainee heroes” have no ability to turn these external “internal forces” into abilities that they can control, they cannot use them to dominate the martial arts. Until one day, the “trainee hero” learned a way to freely control these internal forces, from the ability to “get” to the ability to “possess”, and the hero was officially born.
Now for many enterprise-level users, it is at the critical moment of transition from “trainee heroes” to heroes: on the surface, they have gained external “IT internal forces”, but in reality they have been transformed into these external “IT internal forces”. For enterprises to control and possess “business capabilities”, there is still a lack of a threshold from quantitative change to qualitative change.
”Now, from the entire society to enterprise users, the investment in digital construction is very large, but because many projects only focus on implementation and deployment, and ignore operation and maintenance, these projects have become decorations and did not play a role in planning. It can be said that This is a very profound lesson in our digital construction process in the past few years.” Liu Hongtao, President of Cloud Wisdom, emphasized in an interview a few days ago that from “obtaining” IT capabilities to “owning” business capabilities, operation and maintenance is playing more and more. Important role, “three points of construction, seven points of operation and maintenance: the real system must be used well, operation and maintenance is extremely important, because the construction is often one-time, and the operation and maintenance is long-term. So in the future in the entire digital application , Operation and maintenance will definitely become more and more important.”
What is obvious is that IT operation and maintenance at this moment is not the same concept as IT operation and maintenance that was originally defined as network management and computer maintenance. In the past ten years, with the continuous emergence of new IT technologies, more and more enterprise-level users, inspired by the theory and methodology of “digital transformation”, have implemented and deployed many emerging IT technologies and tools: Cloud services, private cloud, hybrid cloud, cloud native, to edge computing, AI, 5G, big data… Then, the edge of enterprise-level IT architecture continues to expand, and the enterprise’s own IT environment becomes more and more There are more and more complex and involved emerging IT technology thresholds, and the amount of data and data types are increasingly showing a real “explosive” growth trend… The boundaries of enterprise IT operation and maintenance are also getting bigger and more difficult. The higher you come, the richer the connotation.
The widely recognized definition of the role of IT operation and maintenance is that IT operation and maintenance needs to be directly responsible for the continuity of enterprise business. In other words, the current IT operation and maintenance is actually a complete integrated system. One end is connected to the actual business of the enterprise, and the other end is connected to the entire IT system of the enterprise. Through the use of more advanced technologies, means, tools, methods, Theory, system and process, comprehensive management and control of IT operating environment, IT business system and IT operation and maintenance personnel, to achieve comprehensive support for the business-from this perspective, IT operation and maintenance is indeed to help companies transform IT capabilities into business An important step in ability.
”In 2016, Gartner had already put forward the concept of AIOps. At that time, it was AIOps in a narrow sense. It was mainly based on data indicators and algorithms to drive the development of artificial intelligence operation and maintenance. By 2018, a large number of artificial intelligence manufacturers have been in succession. Invested into the automatic operation and maintenance market. However, the investment in algorithms cannot solve some breakthrough developments in intelligent operation and maintenance. Therefore, after the algorithm craze in 2019 receded, the current automatic operation and maintenance technology mainly focuses on scene exploration and partial application.” Wang Huan, the senior pre-sales director of Cloud Wisdom, emphasized that at this stage, IT operation and maintenance is also completing its own upgrade in terms of means and technology. Step forward.
As a provider established in 2009 that has always focused on the field of IT operation and maintenance, Wang Huan emphasized that in the process of extensive contact with users, Yunzhizhi found that although IT operation and maintenance is playing an increasingly important role in the digital transformation of enterprises, The IT operation and maintenance market itself is also developing rapidly, but there is a lack of a common recognized standard between users and system providers, and the two parties have very large deviations in the definition and understanding of the concept of “intelligent operation and maintenance”.
”Everyone does not have a context for communication. When discussing the scenario of intelligent operation and maintenance, everyone does not have a common standard.” Liu Hongtao said: “So after research and thinking, we decided to develop a maturity model for intelligent operation and maintenance. On the one hand, it allows everyone to discuss issues under the same standard system and architecture. On the other hand, it can also guide the future development of the entire industry and understand where the company’s capabilities are lacking.”
On September 23, 2021, Cloud Wisdom was officially released. A set of intelligent operation and maintenance hierarchical maturity model, the intelligent operation and maintenance evolution route from Level0 to Level5 is divided into 6 stages, respectively from business user experience, operation and maintenance organization management, process management, tool application, data management and application average failure Multiple dimensions such as recovery time describe the operation and maintenance management characteristics of each stage in detail, and provide corresponding key improvement methods for the evolution of each stage.
”The six stages of the intelligent hierarchical maturity model released by Cloud Wisdom are: human operation and maintenance, auxiliary operation and maintenance, integrated operation and maintenance, preliminary intelligent operation and maintenance, highly intelligent operation and maintenance, and fully intelligent operation and maintenance. If smart If the highest level of O&M maturity is Level5, in fact, the current general level of enterprise users is around Level 2: that is, 65.62% of customers are actually below the average.” Wang Huan emphasized, according to such a smart O&M With the hierarchical maturity model, business users can actually more easily understand where their current operation and maintenance status is, what is the direction of future advancement development, and what specific ability preparations and improvements are needed to achieve advancement.
Liu Hongtao, President of Cloud Wisdom
Liu Hongtao believes that the intelligent operation and maintenance grading maturity model launched this time is similar to the grading model of autonomous driving, which is also of very important significance and value for the development of the industry itself, especially for local related companies in China: “The field of operation and maintenance has existed for at least 40 years. When there was IT, there was operation and maintenance. This is a normal business, but the methodology and technical system of operation and maintenance include some of the most basic definitions of work. , Are from the United States, are from the inventors of IT technology, they have been leading this matter. So far, Chinese practitioners are always in a state of acceptance and learning.” Liu Hongtao believes that this situation is happening. Changes have taken place, China’s digital transformation construction is becoming faster and faster, and application scenarios are becoming more and more complex. “The existing methodology and standards in the field of operation and maintenance can no longer fully meet and guide the development of the real industry.” It’s not suitable anymore. That’s why we proposed such a model framework, hoping to target China’s intelligent operation and maintenance market, a standard that can be universally recognized, so that the entire intelligent operation and maintenance industry and enterprise users have a future-oriented development framework. ”
Write at the end
We not only need to speed up our pace, but also need to constantly clarify the direction we are going forward. This sentence applies not only to those Chinese companies that have the courage to try and promote the practice of digital transformation, but also to the vast number of local IT industry practitioners in China-we are learning and at the same time good at innovation; we are catching up, and at the same time being brave to lead .
When answering the author’s question, Liu Hongtao talked about a set of figures: At present, in a relatively mature market, operation and maintenance accounts for 15-20% of the IT procurement budget of enterprises; while in the IT procurement budget of Chinese enterprises, the operation and maintenance part The proportion is often only 2 to 5%. He emphasized that for companies that are practicing digital transformation, in the process of digital project construction, they should also plan at the same time how to do post-construction operation and maintenance: “IT operation and maintenance must be a unified process at the same time as system construction. Planning.”
