In this blog post, Paul Thrasher, Senior Director of Infrastructure and Platform at PagerDuty, provides her takes on the challenges and opportunities facing tech leaders today. From managing complexity to driving operational resilience, Thrasher shares expert insights on how executives can get ahead of disruptions.

The higher education industry is experiencing significant transformation. Colleges and universities have embedded digital tools across their academic environments to provide exceptional experiences for students, faculty, and staff. As technology becomes more integral to education, maintaining efficient, secure IT operations while ensuring 24/7 availability presents new challenges for institutions to manage.

At PagerDuty, we’re committed to delivering powerful updates that help you respond faster, work smarter, and deliver seamless customer experiences. As a fast follow to our recent launch, this quarter’s wrap-up blog highlights our latest product innovations and upcoming features—all designed to enhance your operational resilience and drive meaningful business outcomes by reducing risk and strengthening your ability to adapt and respond effectively.

On July 19th, a widespread technical failure crippled operations across industries, resulting in lost revenue, wasted operating costs, and damaged customer trust. For businesses that had built trust by providing reliable and resilient services, this had both an immediate and a lasting impact.

Global outages and disruptions have become an inevitable reality for the modern enterprise. As digital dependencies deepen, organizations must effectively manage disruptions or risk damage to their customer experience, brand reputation, and bottom line. Today, we’re thrilled to unveil the latest innovations for the PagerDuty Operations Cloud.

A Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study, commissioned by PagerDuty, reveals that the PagerDuty Operations Cloud delivered a 249% return on investment (ROI) and a net present value of $4.01 million over three years.* The study shows that after adopting the PagerDuty Operations Cloud, organizations reported improved operational efficiency, better incident management, and significant cost savings.

Innovation in automation is transforming what’s possible in operational dynamics at an unprecedented pace. For modern enterprises, this shift is not just a technological evolution; it’s a strategic imperative. C-suite executives and boardrooms increasingly recognize the potential of technologies like GenAI as powerful tools for enhancing productivity, reducing risk, and optimizing costs.

Consistency is key in today’s ultra-competitive retail environment. Whether a customer walks into a store in New York City, London, or Tokyo, or shops online, they expect the same seamless and personalized shopping experience, regardless of where they are. These consistent experiences are what creates customer loyalty and keep them coming back From an IT perspective, delivering these experiences across multiple distributed locations presents unique challenges.