The economy and businesses closely rely on network infrastructures functioning efficiently. Minor network bottlenecks and snags can cost companies a good chunk of money and negatively affect their reputation. When there is so much to lose, the natural reaction of organizations is to throw more people and, in turn, more money at the problem.

In the context of IT service management, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have long been the cornerstone for measuring and ensuring the quality of services provided to customers. However, as technology evolves and incidents become more complex, relying solely on SLAs may not be sufficient. This is where Service Level Objectives (SLOs) come into play, offering a more nuanced approach to Incident Response.

Migrating network monitoring solutions is more than just a list of devices and technical requirements. It’s also about ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned - from team members to customers and everyone in between.

Splunk gives you amazing tools to analyze system data and make business-critical decisions, react to issues, and even proactively address future problems. And since it is so good at those things, it’s not surprising that there are myriad tools to help you reflexively analyze your own Splunk deployment.

Without a doubt, you’ve heard about the persistent talent gap that has troubled the technology sector in recent years. It’s a problem that isn’t going away, plaguing everyone from engineering teams to IT security pros, and if you work in the industry today you’ve likely experienced it somewhere within your own teams. Despite major changes in the tech landscape, it is clear that organizations are still having significant difficulty keeping their technical talent in-house.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles…OK, OK, OK, for any of you that read My Five Favourite Things to Automate blog know where I’m going with this, so I’ll save you the rest. Instead, let’s get stuck into what brings us here today: Cloud Commander. Prior to its launch I worked with partners previewing the product, and seeing first-hand how it can have a significant impact on anyone responsible for managing Microsoft 365, Azure, and Intune environments.

When discussing reliability, we tend to focus on the things that we have control over: applications, virtual machine instances, deployment patterns, etc. But this ignores a significant and ever-growing part of nearly all modern software: dependencies. Dependencies are services that provide extra functionality for other services and applications. For instance, many websites depend on databases, caches, payment processors, and similar services in order to function.

With the possibilities for increased productivity, reduced costs, and improved customer experiences, organizations are embracing automation across multiple areas of their operational activities. However, navigating the complexities of automation requires a structured approach. This is where frameworks such as Resolve Systems’ Automation Capability Framework and the TM Forum Automation Maturity Model come into play.