The role of analytics as IT departments become business partners

The use of data analytics has become ever more important in making sound business decisions and managing increasingly varied and complex IT environments.

By analysing important operational and business data, in real time, CIOs and IT managers will have a clear and accurate overview of how their organisation’s IT infrastructure is performing. This visibility will help them improve security measures and enable them to make more informed business decisions.

Using the insight and intelligence that these analytics provide, the IT department can be transformed from simply being a cost centre to becoming a true partner to the business, delivering value to the organisation.

The three examples that follow illustrate the role that IT analytics can play in solving some of the key challenges that today’s CIOs are facing.

Providing greater context on compromises
Each day the news reminds us that large, high-profile organisations are continuously being compromised by external hackers as well as malicious insiders. These attacks were once carried out to enhance the prestige of the hacker or as an act of revenge.

Nowadays though, they can cause financial, reputational and legal damage from which it can be hard for a business to recover.

Most organisations tend to remain unaware of any compromise until they find that corporate information has made its way online or into the hands of a competitor. Indeed, it can often take weeks, or even months, after the first intrusion for an organisation to discover that it’s been compromised. And this first intrusion can always be traced back to an end-user’s actions, whether deliberate or otherwise.

A lack of visibility into these actions means that IT managers will have little or no means of anticipating future breaches and, when threats are becoming more complex and sophisticated, will see minimal results from traditional signature-based detection methods.

By focusing on behavioural patterns however, and understanding the context that lies behind them, IT analytics can offer an insight into any anomalous activity. If IT managers are able to more quickly identify and isolate intrusions, then they’ll be in a far better position to avoid any subsequent damage.

Automating and improving processes and procedures
The process of discovering the applications used within an organisation can be automated by using IT analytics. Not only will they list those applications currently installed, but they will also provide a context around how the applications are used, based on criteria such as location, department and job role.

Analytics can be used to reveal the relationships between devices, servers and communication ports, for example, and their dependence on the IT infrastructure. The meaningful qualitative and quantitative context that IT managers are able to glean from this will then allow them to analyse the volume of traffic, the number of connections and their duration, providing them with a real-time snapshot from which informed business decision can be made.

Data analysis such as this can allow for IT projects to be more successfully planned and implemented. Easier verification of budget requirements, and more effective assessment of deadlines being met, for example, will mean that end-users, the IT team and the whole business will enjoy a more positive outcome.

Additionally, and crucially for the ongoing success of any project, IT analytics offer significant improvements over traditional, time-consuming, potentially inaccurate and costly methods of measurements.

Illustrating the benefits
Migration projects are a prime example of the importance that an end-user perspective can play; before, during and after the event.

Analytics allow IT departments to understand the context of just how and where an organisation’s applications are currently connected, and to maintain these connections in any future iteration.

As part of this process, such context is important in helping to ensure that all workstations are ready and able to support the latest version, along with any new configurations such as patches and updates to operating systems that could affect disk space and health status.

IT departments will find analytics of immense value in encouraging end-users to adopt any new versions of current business application. By using IT analytics to offer a comparison of indicators such as the number of crashes or freezes before and after a migration, IT departments will be far better able to convince end-users of the benefits of the new version.

Ultimately, the planning, introduction and measurement of any migration project will only ever be subjective if progressed without the insight and visibility provided by IT analytics.

Today’s IT environment is faster, more agile and more intelligent than ever before, and subject to increasingly more complex and sophisticated threats.

IT analytics provide valuable, accurate insight in real time, enabling faster sharing of information within the IT department and the wider organisation, and ensuring greater security of business transactions. By making the IT department an invaluable partner to the overall business, IT analytics are now a necessary and integral factor in any organisation’s success.