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We look at the role of artificial intelligence and chatbots in IT service management. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is serving an important role in IT service management (ITSM) as organizations seek to… Continue reading
Building an enterprise mobile apps for business takes more than just assembling a collection of files. Developers must take into account a wide range of considerations to… Continue reading
Getting in sync with your organization’s goals has never been more important, or more challenging. Here’s how to align IT and business strategy for digital success. – IT… Continue reading
IT managed services based on cloud computing are catching on with many small and medium-sized businesses as a way to offload the burdens of buying and maintaining software and hardware.
The idea is simple: instead of buying and managing your own IT assets, your company pays to use a system owned by a third party. A simple free version of the idea is Google Drive, which allows users
anywhere to work and collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet and other applications hosted on Google’s servers.
The cloud’s key benefit is that it saves companies money because they don’t have to purchase, implement, maintain and update hardware or software. For example, some experts estimate a company can save about 65% on an ERP system by implementing it through the cloud rather than buying the software.
IT vendors have leaped on the artificial intelligence/machine learning bandwagon, spreading a level of confusion that threatens potential technology benefits with AI washing.
As many in the enterprise IT community will remember, technology suppliers succeeded in roundly confusing buyers in the early part of the millennium by “greenwashing” their products and services – or in other words, exaggerating the true extent of their environmentally-friendly credentials – thereby shooting themselves in the foot and, arguably, putting the brakes on the market.
But it seems that many have learned little from the experience. According to Gartner, the IT industry is now pursuing an equally self-destructive strategy of “AI (artificial intelligence) washing” – by applying the AI label too indiscriminately, suppliers are once again bamboozling potential customers, who are putting off making buying decisions as a result.
So just how true is this contention and, if it is valid, what impact is it having on the market to date? Nick Patience, research vice-president at 451 Research, believes that AI in the enterprise software space is certainly overhyped, and adoption has lagged behind uptake in the consumer market.
“A lot of startups are claiming to do AI when they’re using rules-based automation,” he says. “Suppliers also say they have AI systems, but it’s actually much more narrowly defined machine learning software that does image recognition or leads scoring.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s never going to be a robot that can do many of the things humans can do, so you have to cut through the hype to know what you’re getting.”
Emma Kendrew, AI lead for Accenture Technology, agrees that the hype cycle is reaching a peak, driven by busy corporate marketing machines hoping to take advantage of the possibilities opened up by big data and the cloud, as well as burgeoning customer interest. Continue reading
Legacy technology can hinder your ability to meet changing market dynamics. Here’s how to prioritize and execute IT modernization efforts that drive business value.- legacy IT systems
The IT stack at Live Nation Entertainment resembled the setup typically found at most companies of any substantial size and age: a mix of new systems with some older hardware and software.
Similarly, Live Nation found itself in another typical situation: trying to move at the speed of business while dealing with legacy systems not up to the task.
Those situations drove the company’s decision to ramp up modernization, says Jake Burns, the vice president of cloud services at the Beverly Hills-based global entertainment company.
“For a couple of years, I and my peers were starting to feel that way. But then, at the end of 2015, the senior leadership made a decision to modernize IT. It became my project in 2016,” he says.
Since then Burns has led Live Nation’s multiphase modernization efforts. The first phase involved ditching much of the corporate on-premises data center and migrating its applications to AWS, a move that increased efficiency and speed while decreasing costs. Continue reading