Enterprise AIOps quietly gets real

Buzz in the IT industry around AIOps has died down considerably over the last three years. Amid the waning fanfare, however, real-world use of IT automation based on machine learning algorithms has emerged among enterprises. AIOps -- or AI for IT Operations -- refers to the use of machine learning algorithms to automate routine IT tasks. That can include sifting through IT monitoring alerts, responding to incidents or handling the so-called "undifferentiated heavy lifting" required to do routine maintenance on infrastructure systems. The term emerged in the mainstream in 2018, and by 2019, AIOps had become a common industry buzzword, prompted several mergers and acquisitions among IT vendors and along with them, plenty of speculation about a highly automated, AI-driven future for computing.