New Tool Uses Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence To Improve IT Operations Posted on : Sep 26 - 2017

The Splunk platform is well-used by some of the biggest names in industry when it comes to machine analytics. Today it announced that it is adding AI into the mix in its new release – Splunk IT Service Intelligence 3.0.

The company already claims a 31.2% share of the IT operations analytics market – including 85 of the Fortune 100 – but now it is hoping to increase that by putting machine learning and predictive analytics at the fingertips of its customers.

This will be done through a wizard-style interface allowing them to simply plug in data sources – which could be time series or event data from servers, applications and machines talking to each other across a network.

Splunk SVP of IT markets, Rick Fitz, told me “What we’ve been finding is that these algorithms – people just don’t understand them. Our customers are generally highly educated, super-smart people who know their environments very well, but when we ask them to apply an algorithm there’s only a small percentage who are willing to engage.

“So, what we ended up doing is creating human interfaces – wizards – to teach people how to apply the algorithms without ever identifying the algorithm – we allow them to configure it, and then fine-tune it to make it their own.”

One of the key use cases is setting thresholds at which intervention may become necessary during automated processes. This has traditionally been a manual process involving a static figure – set a threshold and receive a notification when it is exceeded – indicating that there could be a problem which needs addressing. But in industry today, due to the fast-changing technology and systems being rolled out, this is often no longer sufficient.

“Systems are always changing state, developers are doing stuff literally every minute – so a known threshold just doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore,” Fitz tells me.

This is where machine learning and predictive AI comes in – by monitoring inputs and outputs across operational systems, thresholds can be determined and set at levels where they will have real impact.

“We can dynamically change it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis,” Fitz says. View More