Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Enterprise operations reached a point where complexity outpaced human interpretation and outgrew the capabilities of generic AI. As environments became more distributed and interdependent, every incident, anomaly, and degradation produced ripple effects across systems that require context, lineage, and reasoning. Yet most AI models were not built for this reality. They were trained for general knowledge tasks, not the deeply connected operational truths that define enterprise performance.

I've spent a lot of time talking to platform teams who feel like they're running in circles. They build incredible automation to speed up service delivery, but even when it's running perfectly, nobody actually knows what's happening across the organization. It's hard to see who owns which service or if those services even meet basic company standards. Automation's a great start, but it usually hits a wall when you try to scale it.

A new HBR study reveals that the race to build and manage AI agents may be pushing knowledge workers toward a new form of cognitive overload. If you spend any time on LinkedIn these days, you’ve probably seen the same type of post over and over. Someone proudly announces they built an AI agent that now writes their emails, analyzes data, drafts presentations, and maybe even ships code.

Veterinary clinics typically operate during standard 9–5 business hours. But emergencies don’t follow a schedule. The puppy you just brought home might decide that the rubber duck your toddler dropped on the floor looks like the perfect snack. Or your dog might get into a box of Valentine’s Day desserts you left on the counter. Suddenly, what seemed like an ordinary evening turns into a frantic search for help.

Every observability vendor has an AI story right now. Most have an MCP. Many have a chatbot. All have a demo where the AI finds the root cause of an incident in thirty seconds and everyone in the room nods. In the context of a public demo, these tools look almost identical. Ask the AI a question, the tool returns an answer, and the engineer fixes the bug. Impressive. But if you buy based on the demo, you may end up with an AI layer that looks great on a call and disappoints in production.

Over time, on-call teams build up a quiet layer of knowledge about their systems. Someone learns that a specific error code always means phone calls are failing. Someone else figures out that a particular background job fires a warning every night and has never once needed attention. That knowledge shapes how your team responds to incidents every day. But when it only lives in people’s heads, your response depends entirely on the right person being available at the right time.