Most folks familiar with BigPanda know that automation is a foundational block of our technology. Our platform automates the entire events pipeline with functions including standardizing and deduplicating alerts, cutting down on the volume of incidents, and automated enrichment that provides better context and alert payloads. But these are all part of an inbound flow of events through integrations.

IT Operations is experiencing lightning-fast change right now. From the emergence of cloud computing to the explosion of data—not to mention ever-present cyber threats—every day is a new day for IT Ops. At BigPanda, we’re laser-focused on making life easier for IT Ops teams, which means we’re staying on top of all this change to help IT Ops keep up.

Every IT Ops team uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to track metrics that keep them accountable, improving, and contributing to long-term success. But it’s easy for teams to lose sight of what KPIs to use, how many they should use, and how to derive meaning from them. To shed light on what constitutes a meaningful KPI, Sterling Nostedt, BigPanda’s Value and Adoption advisor, hosted a community conversation which spanned across multiple industries.

Whiskey and Wisdom is a monthly executive-only forum where ITOps leaders can network independently and discuss high-level AIOps and ITOps strategies with their industry peers. In our most recent session, the discussion was geared specifically towards AIOps—its hype and its reality. Here are some quick value takeaways from the conversation.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we anticipated a slow-down in IT-related spending. In reality, the opposite occurred. Companies massively expanded their digital offerings using the same IT staff they’d had pre-pandemic, even as the teams lost access to many of their existing tools while working from home. This acceleration put immense pressure on IT teams everywhere, resulting in messy incident management, outages, and a huge shortage of talent.