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Today's enterprise IT infrastructures are expanding in size and complexity as the number of connected endpoints grows, and this is all in response to the volume of business information that flows between them. In turn, users are becoming increasingly frustrated and dissatisfied with their IT departments as they contend with the demands of tackling this new complexity. As a result, CIOs are surrounded and under constant pressure to find more cost-effective ways of working.

The good people of the IT service desk are constantly being presented with a series of fresh challenges that are becoming increasingly more difficult for them to address. Mindful of an urgent need for a shift in focus from reactive maintenance to a more pro-active, tailored and focused approach, they are likely to welcome the insight that IT Operations Analytics can provide.

The IT infrastructure insight
Gartner recently identified IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) as a form of real-time analytics that is set to have a significant impact on the IT industry. Over the next few years, it will enable new and more cost-effective ways of delivering improved services to an organisation's end-users.

ITOA solutions use a series of advanced analytics to harness vast volumes of data generated by the various applications and devices across an organisation’s IT estate, in order to provide IT service desks with instant visibility of issues as they occur, possibly before users are impacted. With analysts reporting that fewer than half of the IT issues reported by end-users are detected by back-end monitoring tools, there is a clear need for the visibility that ITOA offers concerning IT infrastructure, its endpoints and applications.

IT Operations Analytics aggregate and analyse the data generated by the numerous processes and services that depend upon and utilise an organisation's IT infrastructure. This analysis is then used to provide the IT service desk with full visibility of the performance of that infrastructure. With this visibility they can identify and isolate inefficiencies, disruptions and failures across infrastructure's endpoints, applications, and servers.

Identifying and isolating issues
ITOA tools provide the IT service desk with a graphical view of the IT infrastructure, the current state of connected individual devices, along with the ability to review and analyse the historical activity of devices.

By identifying any changes that have been made, including the installation of any applications, the service desk has visibility of potential issues that may occur within the infrastructure, as well as understanding the likely impact of these issues on the wider network.

Not only would a member of the service desk be able to see the entire infrastructure at any given point, but with the addition of an end-user perspective they would be able to focus on individual end-points such as PCs. Having used ITOA tools to identify and isolate an issue, they could then see which other users on the network were using a similar configuration and then, armed with this intelligence, consider the likelihood of similar issues occurring elsewhere.

In addition, service desks will also be provided with a clear understanding of any issues that arise, better enabling them to implement the solutions necessary to help users to restore or maintain the service levels they require and expect.

Not only can IT Operations Analytics enable IT service teams to quickly and efficiently identify and isolate issues occurring within a company's infrastructure, they can also help to anticipate these problems down to the user level, in turn facilitating proactive investigation and resolution.

Ultimately, the insights that ITOA delivers will allow for the provision of a consistent and efficient service regardless of the size and complexity of an organisation's IT infrastructure, and even on a limited budget.