Are you the Master of the Machines? Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director

Quocirca Comment – July 2014

Are you the Master of the Machines? http://www.quocirca.com © 2014 Quocirca Ltd

It will not come as much surprise that recent

Quocirca research1 shows most European

businesses are reliant on their IT systems to

drive commercial transactions. However,

measuring a given business’s transactiveness

(the degree of this reliance) is a useful gauge for

looking deeper in to how IT systems are

managed to ensure responsiveness and a good

customer experience.

The first observation is that highly transactive

businesses are more likely to be using flexible IT

platforms; that is, virtualisation and on-demand

infrastructure (platform and/or infrastructure as a

service – PaaS/IaaS). A second observation is

that this goes hand in hand with a recognition

that IT operational intelligence has an important

role to play, not just in ensuring IT systems are

responsive, but that they are reacting to

commercial requirements and that all relevant

staff have a view of this.

For the purposes of the research, IT operational

intelligence was defined as follows: “harnessing

machine data to gain real-time insights into

operations to access, tune and improve IT and

business processes, to identify security threats,

highlight performance issues and see emerging

customer trends”. To get a measure of the

capability that the organisations represented by

the respondents had in place, an operational

intelligence index (OI-index) was created with a

range from 0-3. The index measured the

capability organisations had to use such

intelligence in the following areas:

1. Search and investigate

2. Proactive monitoring

3. Operational visibility

4. Real-time business insights

The more capability they had in each area; the

higher the overall OI-index value. Scores varied

widely, but went up in line with transactiveness

and the use of flexible infrastructure. Those

organisations using flexible infrastructure as a

primary way of deploying IT had an average OI

index over 2, whilst for others it was less than 2.

In other words, flexible infrastructure provides

the business agility needed by transactive

businesses but supporting operational

intelligence tools are needed to make it all work.

However, it goes well beyond just having the

tools in place; as important is the job roles that

get to view the intelligence provided. Most

provide some level of insight around operational

intelligence to IT managers. However, those

with a high OI-index are much more likely to go

beyond this and provide a view to other job roles

including those at board level. This is because

they are using IT operational intelligence to

provide real time business insights which is of

value across an organisation.

Operational intelligence relies on machine data

as its raw material and as with any intelligence,

it is only as good as the data gathered. The

volumes generate by an organisation’s IT

systems can be huge. Over the period of a year,

for an average enterprise it can run into billions

of data items. This includes things like what data

went via which router, who accessed which

application and when, the IP addresses, URLs

and devices via which web sites are accessed and

so on. This makes operational intelligence a big

data problem and it fits all the 5 Vs definition of

big data well.

These are v for volume as described above; v for

variety, covering the range of sources, with their

Are you the Master of the Machines? http://www.quocirca.com © 2014 Quocirca Ltd

wide variety of formats. If machine data can be

used in near real time, it gives v for velocity; and

it can add lots of v for value to operational

decision making. All of which gets an

organisation closer to the truth about what is

happening behind the scenes on their IT systems;

the last v for veracity. Machine data is what it is;

you cannot hide from the facts that analysing it

exposes.

That said, much is missed, even those with a

maximum OI-index only gather machine data

from about 65% of their IT infrastructure; for

those with a very low index it is about 15%.

Clearly, something is missing to deliver the

vision even among the most capable and

ambitious and that turns out to be the supporting

tools which are often not up to the job.

Mostly, organisations are relying on general

purpose business intelligence tools, backed with

an assortment of spreadsheets and general

purpose databases. Only 27% use purpose built

tools; however, those that have implemented

specialist tools do gather considerably greater

volumes of machine data and will therefore have

access to better operational intelligence.

For many it is early days; those with specialist

tools in place will extend their use to improve

machine data capture the resulting intelligence

gathering. The reach of the tools’ use has to

include on-demand IT resources as well as those

deployed in-house as the most transactive

businesses turn more and more to flexible

infrastructure to ensure a great user experience

and maintain competitive edge.

1 – Quocirca’s report “Masters of Machines” is

freely available to readers of The Stack at the

following link

http://www.splunk.com/goto/masters_of_machin

es_whitepaper

This article first appeared on The Stack:

http://www.thestack.com/are-you-the-

master-of-the-machines

Are you the Master of the Machines? http://www.quocirca.com © 2014 Quocirca Ltd

About Quocirca Quocirca is a primary research and analysis company specialising in the business impact of information technology

and communications (ITC). With world-wide, native language reach, Quocirca provides in-depth insights into the

views of buyers and influencers in large, mid-sized and small organisations. Its analyst team is made up of real-

world practitioners with first-hand experience of ITC delivery who continuously research and track the industry

and its real usage in the markets.

Through researching perceptions, Quocirca uncovers the real hurdles to technology adoption – the personal and

political aspects of an organisation’s environment and the pressures of the need for demonstrable business value in

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has the ability to transform businesses and the processes that drive them, but often fails to do so. Quocirca’s

mission is to help organisations improve their success rate in process enablement through better levels of

understanding and the adoption of the correct technologies at the correct time.

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