Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

In the fast-paced world of retail, staying ahead of changing consumer demands is more challenging than ever. As retailers strive to enhance customer experiences and maintain competitiveness, many are turning to the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI). Zebra Technologies is at the forefront of this movement, offering AI solutions that unlock the potential of frontline operations, allowing retailers to make smarter business decisions.

Most internal AI projects for IT operations next exit pilot. Budgets stretch, priorities shift, key hires fall through, and what started as a strategic initiative turns into a maintenance burden—or worse, shelfware. Not because the teams lacked vision. But because building a production-grade AI agent is an open-ended commitment. It’s not just model tuning or pipeline orchestration. It’s everything: architecture, integrations, testing frameworks, feedback loops, governance, compliance.

About 15 years ago, I worked at a company building network security appliances (with ARM-based network processors) and was responsible for the development of custom Linux firmware. The product launch was successful; we shipped and managed a large fleet of devices in the field. After a few firmware releases, we received alerts from the device management system telling us that there were intermittent problems. Remoted into the appliances but could not reproduce the error.

Today’s digital businesses are more interconnected than ever. Industry research shows that 74% of organizations now take an “API-first” approach, and the average application is powered by between 26 and 50 APIs. While this accelerates innovation, it also introduces new risks: when an external provider fails, the impact can be immediate and far-reaching.

Last night, over dinner in Canary Wharf, I found myself catching up with a former colleague who is now leading investments at one of the big banks.

When looking at the broad landscape of IT automation tools, you’ll find dozens (if not hundreds) of tools that seem like viable solutions to your automation needs. Almost all of those tools can be broken down into two categories: Open source automation tools and commercial automation tools. (Open source automation tools with a commercial offering are still considered open source, even if the commercial edition has a price tag.)