Dynatrace: cloud is complex & convoluted, is AI the antidote?

There’s an old saying in corporate communications: when there’s no news, do a press survey.

That’s mostly true and the Computer Weekly Developer Network is notorious for our disdain of contrived self-serving survey material. Survey: 80% of firms not adequately prepared for cyber-security attacks, says anti-virus specialist… [*yawn*], you know the sort of thing.

Could the latest market assessment from Dynatrace prove more worthy?

The software intelligence company has worked to produce an independent global survey of 800 CIOs, which suggest that migration to enterprise clouds is creating a surge in IT complexity.

We’ve said it before i.e. cloud was supposed to be simpler, but cloud is still complicated.

So is there more substance in the snappily titled report “Top Challenges for CIOs in a Software-Driven, Hybrid, Multi-Cloud World” report? What’s the worry with cloud anyway?

Cloud concerns

CIOs are actually worried about lost revenue (49%) and reputational damage (52%) resulting as a result of any migration to enterprise cloud.  The result, apparently, is that IT teams now spend 33% of their time dealing with digital performance problems.

According to said Dynatrace CTO and founder Bernd Greifeneder, the enterprise cloud is dynamic, hybrid, multi-cloud and web-scale, containing hundreds of technologies, millions of lines of code and billions of dependencies. However, this transformation isn’t simply about lifting and shifting apps to the cloud, it’s a fundamental shift in how applications are built, deployed and operated.

“As complexity grows beyond IT teams’ capabilities, the economics of throwing more manpower at the problem no longer works. Organisations need a radically different AI approach. That’s why we reinvented from the ground up, creating an all-in-one platform with a deterministic AI at the core, which provides true causation, not just correlation,” said Greifeneder.

Dynatrace’s platform itself does not require a lengthy [machine] learning period because it automatically discovers and captures so-called ‘high fidelity’ data from applications, containers, services, processes and infrastructure.

It then automatically maps the billions of dependencies and interconnections in these complex environments. Its AI engine, Davis, analyses this data and its dependencies in real-time to instantly provide precise answers — not just more ‘data on glass’ i.e. data that is transparency, hollow or just so transiently relevant in terms of time that it’s barely worth the Perspex it’s written on.

Chewy factor

Was this chewier and meatier than most of the survey puff out there then?

Well, on the one hand, it was a data intelligence company suggesting to us that AI-centric data intelligence might be the answer to cloud complexity… imagine that?

But on the other hand, Dynatrace did address the issue of massive binary and code dependency interconnectedness, it was rather more than: “dear Mrs/Mr CIO, please tell us how tough your digital transformation journey is?”

Cloud is still tough, life is difficult… surely a bit more AI can help.

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