3 years ago I worked on something called the Digital Operations Layer Services (DOLS). DOLS was intended to transcend the siloed verticals in large organisations by implementing a thin layer of analytics and automation services, connecting the underpinning infrastructure, applications and IT processes with the business organisation and customer above. By spanning across verticals, organisations could gain the required insight into end to end processes that cut across vendors, partners, teams, and technology and drive further cost reduction and efficiencies. An example of an end to end process may be the supply chain of a retailer or the loan processing of a bank, each moving data through multiple applications through its lifecycle.

At some point Gartner began writing about AIOps, which read a lot like the intent of DOLS. From Gartner: “AIOps platforms utilize big data, modern machine learning and other advanced analytics technologies to directly and indirectly enhance IT operations (monitoring, automation and service desk) functions with proactive, personal and dynamic insight.” The platforms that power AIOps “enable the concurrent use of multiple data sources, data collection methods, analytical (real-time and deep) technologies, and presentation technologies”.

The limit of AIOps is that it is spoken in the context of how IT organisations can operate. In many respects, it is answering the question about what many organisations do with the tools they have purchased – APMs, network monitoring, ITSM, automation tools – and how to drive the value out of this array of technology. It’s a reasonable problem to solve with benefits to the organisation through gaining proactive insights across the IT stack and potential for cost efficiencies through retiring duplicate toolsets. AIOps’ limit however (at minimum in its message and at most in its execution), is it is IT’s defensive response to running applications and infrastructure for the organisation: monitor, automate, service desk. 

Similarly, DOLs was as much about how to make the best of a challenging situation and typical limits of large organisations – legacy applications, siloed operating model, and varying incentives for vendors and partners to integrate their tools (particularly if they brought them in from the outside). DOLS was intended to enable the organisation to drive the next wave of efficiencies through connecting horizontally rather than typically driving cost reductions through the vertical stack.

As organisations digitise, it is clear that operations needs to be embedded in that digitisation. AIOps (or DOLS) IT-driven efficiency and service improvement approach is unlikely to support the goals of digitisation. Instead, organisations need to embed operations into their digitisation agenda: Digital Ops.

Digital Ops involves defining the set of capabilities that enable a digitised (or digitising) organisation to run. Digital Op is focused on customer experience and business outcomes. Digital Ops capabilities are not the business capabilities built to digitise (mobile apps, omni channel capabilities, automated trucks) but rather the capabilities that enable digitisation to run and be successful. They should be across the organisation’s digitised stack (Your Customer, Business processes, IT and Security Processes, Applications, and Infrastructure) and extend way beyond “monitoring” or a faster response to solving incident tickets. 

An example of a Customer level capability would be Service Experience, encompassing the required analytics and automation-powered components to measure, isolate, predict, and resolve issues for the services consumed by the customer. At the lower end of the stack, a Cost Optimisation capability would encompass the components and internal services to optimise for the move to cloud, the shift to SaaS, and the optimise the legacy hardware all in the service of digitisation (not in the service of IT). Every element of digitisation should consider the Digital Ops capabilities defined by the organisation to enable its overall success.

The capabilities should be intrinsic to the digitising organisation (not add ons, although they can be, but not ideally, retrofitted) and embedded in the design and build of the new customer experience, business process and supporting business capabilities. Regardless of the layer of the stack of any of its capabilities, Digital Ops should be considered as a organisational enabler, sitting at the intersection of business and IT.