The New Wave of Hybrid AI in the Automation Era – Insights from the Experts
Over the past few years, Gartner has made some pretty bold predictions surrounding artificial intelligence and automation technology. These include such projections as the generation of $2.9 trillion in business value, the recovery of 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity and the creation of some 2.3million new jobs. All of this is expected to take place over the next couple of years, if not sooner.
Whatever you believe about AI, one thing’s for sure – it’s not going away any time soon.In fact, all signs indicate that the not-so-distant future will look a lot different from what we are used to today, with machines performing not only the physical work of humans, but also the thinking, planning, strategizing and decision-making as well.
At Ayehu, we’re always trying to stay a step ahead of the curve in terms of technology and its capabilities. Such was the purpose of our recent panel discussion entitled The New Wave of Hybrid AI in the Automation Era, during which we sat down with several AI and automation thought leaders, including:
- Brian Boeggeman, Chief Revenue Officer, Ayehu
- Manish Kothari, President, Ventures, SRI International
- Andrew Brill, VP Engineering & Cloud Services, RPA/IA, Change Healthcare
- Ross Tisnovsky, Head of Americas, Digital 20/20, McKinsey New Ventures
We asked these experts to take a look back at some of the emerging trends observed and experienced in 2018 and offer a glimpse into the future. We also asked each of our esteemed panelists to go out on a limb and make a bold prediction for 2019.
Here’s a little taste of what we uncovered.
Evolution in IT Operations
One of the first topics touched upon by our own Brian Boeggeman centered on the creation of automation centers of excellence (COE) and the automation engineers that are driving adoption and proliferation of automation within the enterprise.
“We saw a trend taking place this year where there’s a lot of focus put on the creation on these centers of excellence to really drive automation,” said Brian. “Automation is clearly seen as a business imperative and a clear necessity in order to orient the next phase of enterprise operations, where efficiencies can be uncovered and realized across the business.”
He continued, “Those automation engineers effectively become the change agents within the organizations to drive that cultural change within the enterprise. As we engage with many of our customers, we’re continuing to see that as a high focus for them actually making investments to build out these COEs to push across the entire organization and enterprise as a whole.”
Brian also talked about the acceleration and creation of new services through automation and AI, pointing out that automation has emerged as a key strategy to achieve the delicate balance between innovation and operational excellence.
Download the on-demand recording to learn how to unleash new capabilities of human capital as well as what trend Brian believes will forever change the service levels and operating capabilities of organizations.
How AI and ML are Impacting the Adoption of Automation in the Enterprise
Next, we turned the floor over to Manish Kothari, who has been involved with artificial intelligence and machine learning since the 70s. Manish opened his statement by pointing how critical data is to extracting the full value of AI.
“I think we’re starting to see a very big transformation take place across all sectors from agriculture, to consumer, and especially in IT where the need is arguably one of the highest,” Manish commented.
He went on to say: “If you are at the IT infrastructure side, you are, actually for one of the first times, really in a position to become an enabler rather an impediment to innovation.”
Manish also shared his insight on what enterprise managers who have never dealt with AI should know before deploying it and how he envisions the roles of managers changing once AI begins to get a foothold.
Find out everything that Manish had to say here.
Top Reasons Organizations Should Automate IT Operations
The next topic on the agenda was turned over to Andrew Brill of Change Healthcare, who was asked to share his thoughts on the top reasons for automating ITOps.
He was quick to point out that while the initial reasons typically revolve around cost savings and efficiency, some really exciting things can begin to happen,particularly in terms of an organization’s ability to remain compliant and consistent in its operating practices. Automation essentially becomes a force multiplier, saving users time and skyrocketing productivity and facilitating innovation.
“When we transform our staff who were doing the more robotic functions and eliminate that from their daily work, it allows them to start thinking about how we advance the organization, how we build better engineered solutions, how we work with partners that add the most value,” Andrew points out.
“Their brains are more actively working on the things that solve business problems as opposed to the functional tasks and work that perhaps we’ve had them do over the past ten years.”
Check out the playback to hear more and learn what Andrew believes are the biggest benefits of automation.
The Impact of AI on Digital Transformation
The discussion then turned to Ross Tisnovsky of McKinsey who was asked what kind of impact he believed technologies such as intelligent automation and AI having on IT digital transformation efforts in the enterprise.
In his response, Ross shared how he approaches the adoption of new technology. In particular, he highlighted the main things that users want from IT which, in his opinion, include:
- A workspace for collaboration and enhanced productivity
- Improved decision-making
- Support for business innovation
- High efficiency at a minimal cost
According to Ross, the solution to these needs requires a hybrid of AI, automation and human decision making.
“Automation works on both sides of the picture and so does the artificial intelligence. In other words, it’s likely to become part of anything we do on the business side today.”
Watch the on-demand discussion to discover the Ross’ most intriguing thoughts on hybrid AI from his real-world experience.
Key Insights and Future Outlook
During the final portion of the panel discussion, the experts weighed in on such points as:
- The role of humans in automation adoption
- Biggest challenges to automating IT operations
- Skills needed to automate effectively
- Critical KPIs/success metrics to focus on at different stages of the IT digital transformation journey
- What enterprise IT leadership should be doing right now to start preparing for the changes to come
- Bold predictions for AI in 2019 (and beyond)
Don’t miss out on what was certainly one of the timeliest and most informative panel discussions we’ve ever had the pleasure of hosting. Tune in to the full recording today!
Ayehu
Ayehu is the IT Automation and Orchestration platform built for the Digital Era. Powered by machine learning algorithms, it acts as a force multiplier for IT operations, security operations, managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs). Customers can significantly save time on manual and repetitive tasks, respond to incidents with pinpoint accuracy, accelerate mean time to resolution, and maintain greater control over IT infrastructure.