Facebook’s recent outage highlights the need for intelligent IT solutions that reduce downtime and prevent incidents before they happen. By incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), IT operations can observe, act and learn without human intervention – thus mitigating the risk of downtime.
On Monday, 04 October, Facebook experienced one of the worst outages in its history, leaving users around the world unable to access its platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, for several hours, apparently as a result of a network configuration change. The outage could have cost Facebook as much as $100 million, according to one estimate, based on the company’s second quarter earnings.
“Businesses experience failures all the time, but these incidents are avoidable and easily isolated with the correct solutions in place. By investing in AI-enabled solutions with effective monitoring toolsets, businesses can avoid the damage incurred when critical infrastructure goes down and systems are not available,” said Stephen Bottger, Executive for DevOps Professional Services at Altron Systems Integration.
Reduced IT budgets puts pressure on CIOs and IT executives. With process automation and effective monitoring, resource time is reduced. This allows IT professionals to focus on critical areas, improving efficiencies, and increasing speed and agility.
An example of such a solution is Altron’s Digital Operations Centre, which predicts what might go wrong and solves it before it happens. The Digital Operations Centre brings together experts in AI, RPA, IT operations and service management to focus on proactive prevention actions and predictive processes. This reduces unplanned downtime and ensures high availability to ensure revenue and brand loyalty is protected.
“Businesses can save time and money by moving from reactive response to pre-emptive action. Our solution enables predictive remediation and self-healing. Over time, we expect more and more companies to include this type of technology,” said Bottger.