Five IT Trends to Look Forward to in 2020

New Year’s Eve marks the transition into a new decade, beginning with personal resolutions and expectations for 2020. Much is the same in the IT industry, as support teams expect to adopt trending technologies to reduce their mean time to repair (MTTR) and improve incident resolution. 

This post will provide an in-depth look into five trends, discussing how growing technologies streamline IT workflows in the new year.

1) Use of Artificial Intelligence in ITOps

Artificial intelligence (AI) adopts human-centered tasks, streamlining daily IT operations and mundane assignments. AI-based technologies have the ability to think and learn, expanding an IT team’s head count and productivity.

The new year marks the continuous adoption of AI-powered computer systems. These technologies automate the process of detection and resolution of common client issues (e.g., servers are down). Spiceworks estimates that, “Business uptake for AI-powered technologies are projected to triple by 2021,” demonstrating or highlighting the rapid adoption of these systems. 

As stated, AI helps IT teams detect anomalies in systems and potentially suggest remedial measures to bring them back to their normal state. By leveraging AI solutions, IT teams achieve maximum client satisfaction, promoting customer retention in the process. 

2) Use of Edge Computing

According to Gartner, edge computing brings data closer to the location where it’s being collected. This enables real-time data processing, allowing different applications to respond to issues immediately.

At its core, edge computing equates to faster response times, as IT teams quickly obtain data and analyze the information for viable solutions. 

3) Adopting IT Service Alerting Tools

IT service alerting tools (ITSA), such as OnPage, automate the alerting process, enabling engineers to receive immediate notifications on mobile. This way, engineers become quickly aware of client issues and resolve them promptly.

ITSA solutions can be integrated with popular IT service management (ITSM) tools such as ticketing systems. This converts intelligent tickets into automated notifications through a complete web management console and smartphone application. 

ITSA solutions enhance team accountability, as resolution performance is tracked and documented through real-time audit trails. 

4) Live Call Routing With Automated Escalations

In the new year, clients can contact support engineers through a dedicated line. By simply dialing a number, clients connect on a live call, detailing their IT issues during after hours.

Additionally, failover mechanisms can be configured, enabling the call to be transferred to another group of engineers, or prompting the caller to leave a voicemail and/or callback number, which then follows a similar escalation path.

Live call routing enhances after-hour operations, enabling IT teams to perfect their client support services. 

5) On-Call Rotations and Schedules

Some organizations manually schedule on-call rotations on excel spreadsheets, making it predisposed to human error. Also, any changes made to these schedules aren’t broadcasted in real time, making it a challenge for on-call engineers to address an issue.

Downtime can cost millions and fumbling through a schedule to assign an incident isn’t a wise decision. This calls for an intelligent automated scheduling system, which saves time through persistent alerting and notification escalations. 

Automated schedules ensure that the tasked engineer receives a critical alert at the right time, every time. In the case that he or she is unresponsive, the alert will then be transferred to the next engineer in line. Essentially, no critical goes unheard or unaddressed by an IT team. 

Bonus Trend

Gartner states that organizations will continue to adopt an agile approach to project management. Agile benefits small organizations that wish to compete with “digital giants.” Agile allows cross-functional teams to divide a large project into manageable and incremental assignments.

Agile is synonymous with frequent developments, software tests and redesigns. This way, small organizations can make immediate adjustments that cater to a customer’s ever-changing needs.

The new year marks a new decade, filled with technological innovation and adoption. Though teams can’t fully predict what’s to come in the decade, they can rest assured that these five trends will make an immediate impact in 2020.