Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

How should the operation and maintenance carry out the digital transformation? In view of this problem, today the editor summarizes this article on the digital transformation of operation and maintenance, hoping to help more friends who want to solve this problem to find a more simple and easy way.

Although various industries have started the process of digital transformation, many operation and maintenance personnel are still very hard, carrying the title of "fire-fighting hero" in the enterprise. "Fire hero" at best, or "scapegoat" to put it another way, seems to be stuck in the quagmire that good things do not go out and bad things spread thousands of miles away.

Why is this? I think this is determined by the productive forces, and people familiar with political economy should know that the famous theory of productive forces determines the relations of production, so what is the productive forces of operation and maintenance? In the era of digital transformation of enterprises, what productive forces should operators have?

The responsibility of operation and maintenance in traditional organizations

I believe that you should have seen a lot of sharing and materials in the past, some around ITIL about how to design the top level with great foresight, and some about a variety of landing experiences through complicated technical languages, only to find that these experiences have a lot of discomfort when combined with their own current situation.

After helping several enterprises to land the operation and maintenance technology platform, I began to reflect. Many people are used to understanding operation and maintenance as a type of work or a job, while I am more inclined to understand operation and maintenance as a combination of management and service. Management means what I can have, and service means what I can provide. What I want to say is generally:

Management is internal, which refers to the process of planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling the various IT elements that I have, emphasizing efficiency.

Service is external, which refers to what capabilities our operation and maintenance team has and how to export them, with an emphasis on agility.

How to give full play to the core elements? I think that as a technical team, the four core elements of operation and maintenance are people, process, technology and data. So how do these four core elements play a role in the context of digital transformation?

The four core elements of operation and maintenance under the digital transformation

1. People and technology

Human is one of the most important elements, and innovation occurs when people interact with technology. We can first use technology to solve the things we are familiar with, and then open our minds and try new ways to do new things.

We need to carry out more collaboration in the entire operation and maintenance team through cross-functional teams that focus on technological innovation and the use of destructive technologies, so as to achieve higher-level operation and maintenance automation and improve the efficiency of daily operation and maintenance management.

We should ensure that the operation and maintenance personnel, especially the newly joined operation and maintenance personnel, are enthusiastic about mastering technology and feel that the operation and maintenance work has a future career path. We can even offer some awards in recognition of their contributions to the technical construction of operation and maintenance.

2. Technology and process

In the digital transformation, the process no longer exists in isolation in the process system, let alone stay on the paper off the line, but should be combined with tools and technology.

Process + technology = automation, using tool system to drive the execution and landing of the process, which can not only ensure that the process is followed in management activities, but also improve the efficiency of operation and maintenance management.

And with the advent of machine learning, deep learning, and ubiquitous low-cost cloud computing, machines execute processes faster than anyone else. How long does it take for one person to create 100 virtual machines? the machine can complete this task in a few minutes.

3. Process and people

In the inherent thinking, the operation and maintenance management process affects efficiency, its function is control and rating, and it is a kind of existence that reduces the experience of users (refers to administrators).

Through digital transformation, people want to change this idea, it should actually be process + automation = high efficiency. When people can really interact with the process, we can "copy".

In an organization with a complete process, one person may have the same influence as ten people. Imagine how fast food companies standardize. For example, the dining process of going to McDonald's in Beijing should be roughly the same as that of going to McDonald's in Hong Kong.

In order to achieve the best state, the operation and maintenance team needs to analyze the information and data left in the process system and gradually improve the management ability of operation and maintenance.

4. Data

Data is the basis of digital transformation, it is nothing new to play with data in the field of operation and maintenance, and AIOps appears more and more frequently in various industry conferences.

If automation is to solve the problem of execution efficiency of operation and maintenance personnel, AIOps is to solve the problem of decision-making efficiency of operation and maintenance personnel. At present, the most widely used scenario of AIOps is monitoring, such as root cause location, fault impact analysis, capacity prediction and so on.

However, I think the data in the hands of the operation and maintenance organization is not only the operation and maintenance data, slightly exaggerated is the full amount of data of the enterprise, how to make good use of the data is the main factor for the operation and maintenance team to continuously improve productivity.

When the operation and maintenance team begins to improve the interaction among people, process and technology, and tries to create value with data, our operation and maintenance team is on the road of digital transformation. If you don't know how to get started, try to consider the following questions:

Aren't we fast enough?

Are we inefficient?

Are we creating value?

If we are not fast enough, should we consider automation and do a good job in the combination of technology and process?

If our efficiency is not high enough, we should examine whether our process and human design are reasonable.

If our work does not show value, we should look for places where we can innovate and give full play to the role of technology, processes and data.

How to enhance the value of operation and maintenance? In the past, we would think that operation and maintenance is a support department, whose responsibility is to provide availability guarantee for each IT application system. However, I think that in the process of enterprise digital transformation, the operation and maintenance team should also take the opportunity of transformation so that they can provide more and improve more.

Operation and maintenance is the supplier of almost all IT resources. If the digital transformation is compared to a high-speed train, the power of this train is provided and guaranteed by the operation and maintenance team. Unlike in the past, operations teams should make it easier, more agile, and cheaper for others to access resources. I think this is one of the reasons why all kinds of clouds are on the ground on a large scale.

Operation and maintenance should be the builders of digital capabilities. The digital transformation of enterprises must be a gradual process, which requires the construction of a variety of capabilities, such as big data analysis, artificial intelligence, …... It is an inevitable trend that the digital transformation of enterprises into the era of ABC (AI, Bigdata, Cloud).

Then the extent to which the team can participate will to a certain extent determine the status of the operation and maintenance team in the enterprise in the future. If your business is considering digital transformation, be sure to seize the opportunity and embrace the future.

I think there is another key point, operations and maintenance should also become tool developers in the process of digital transformation. In our inherent view, the operation and maintenance team seems to have nothing to do with development. However, after the digital transformation of enterprises, there will be a lot of work to be converted to online processing, especially the cooperation between IT departments and other departments will be transformed into online operations, which requires a lot of tools or systems to be built. For example, other departments come to us to apply for IT basic resources, business departments come to us to extract business data, and development teams come to us to check the application log. Wait, we can't expect everything to be done by a professional development team or an outsourced development team. Our own development strength is an important guarantee for the operation and maintenance team to improve its status.

Here, I would like to summarize that in the face of the general trend of digital transformation, the operation and maintenance team needs to make three upgrades:

Efficiency upgrade

Improve the efficiency of the operation and maintenance team, through the construction of various operation and maintenance tools and platforms, improve the efficiency of operation and maintenance work, such as automation tools, intelligent monitoring and so on. To a certain extent, release the energy and time of operators, and then invest in the thinking of digital transformation.

Ability upgrade

To do great things, you must always have decent weapons. OPS teams can start with their own business needs, such as AIOps, RPA and other popular technologies, which can be explored to a certain extent in combination with daily OPS scenarios, and can be extended to other business scenarios after accumulating experience.

Team upgrade

If the operation and maintenance team still stays on the experience accumulated under the traditional IOE architecture, then facing the menacing Internet era, we should be careful and seize the time to improve their skills. Many enterprises in the financial and technology industries have set up their own operation and maintenance development teams, or actively try open source products, or learn from the experience of Internet companies.

How to carry on the transformation of operation and maintenance? Although many enterprises have begun to take action, the effect of the transformation is very little. Therefore, I would like to think about another point, that is, how to break the established thinking and ensure that the transformation can be carried out for a long time. I summarize it as 5p.

1. Destination Purpose

In the transformation of any organization, we want more people to participate in the transformation plan, so we must set influential goals for organizational transformation, which is why I put Purpose in the first place.

Many people will find it easy to set goals, just to set up a famous flag for themselves, such as "building an intelligent operation and maintenance system" and "building a SRE team organization". No, no, no. In fact, is that really the case? Your goal needs to be combined with the strategy of the enterprise, for example, in a bank I came into contact with, put forward the overall goal of "increasing production capacity, promoting transformation, and laying a solid technological foundation for building a first-class digital ecological bank". In fact, when you set up Purpose, you have to answer the following questions for your Purpose:

Why do you believe you can make the transition? -- Transformation requires strength Power

Who do you need to involve in the transformation? -- Transformation needs to mobilize the masses to People

How do you plan to influence the people concerned? -- Transformation requires planning, Plan

What will be the impact after the transformation? -- the transformation needs to talk about income Payback

That's the other 4p we're going to talk about next.

2. Strength Power

Why do you believe you can make the transition? You must find a source of strength for your transformation plan and make it fully recognized in the team. You can try to find it in four directions:

Enterprise strategy

Impact: associate the transformation goal of operation and maintenance with the enterprise strategy, so as to get the attention and support of more senior leaders.

Idea: many enterprises regard digital transformation as their strategy, and IT capability is the key construction content in digital transformation, and operation and maintenance (or operation) management is an indispensable part of it.

Business form

Impact: in the process of business development, the enterprise operation mode will also be adjusted, and operation and maintenance is also a part of it.

Idea: for example, many enterprises are developing Internet + business, which is characterized by agility, which requires operation and maintenance not only to adapt to the sensitive state, but also to take into account the steady state, that is, the so-called two-state operation and maintenance.

External environment

Impact: learn more about the development of the industry, after all, enterprises have to face market competition, to ensure that they are ahead and not behind.

Train of thought: as far as I know, the financial industry often visits and exchanges to compare the development of the industry's leading enterprises and maintain their own competitiveness. At the same time, you can also refer to the experience of top Internet companies, such as BAT sharing.

Current situation of operation and maintenance

Impact: at the same time, the current situation can not be ignored, find the real pain points in the current and future work, and prescribe the right medicine to the case.

Idea: the transformation of operation and maintenance will certainly have a certain internal driving force, and many operation and maintenance teams are faced with problems such as understaffing and inefficiency. Start from these specific problems and formulate corresponding action plans.

Another key point to gain strength is high-level support. For projects involving organizational transformation, it is essential to tilt the corresponding resources to them. And from past experience, the more senior leaders support the project, the richer the resources, and the project will be half successful. On the premise of high-level support, in order to create a warm atmosphere for the transformation of operation and maintenance, the following actions can be taken:

Let leaders participate in important meetings related to operation and maintenance transformation projects.

Discuss the progress of the operation and maintenance transformation project in public

Force dissenting leaders to participate in the transformation and promotion of operation and maintenance.

Organize more extensive training and study to make everyone feel the determination of operation and maintenance transformation.

In a word, the transformation of operation and maintenance must make everyone feel powerful and deeply feel that it is a general trend. We should not evade it passively but take the initiative.

3. Human People

People are important, in the operation and maintenance transformation project, the project manager must be a powerful person, and have the time and energy to focus on promoting the transformation work.

In the past observation, some companies will assign special project managers to promote the transformation of operation and maintenance, and give the project managers a lot of command. On the other hand, part-time project managers often find it difficult to devote enough energy to promoting the project, because if the project manager is responsible for operation and maintenance management at the same time, operation and maintenance is a trivial and complicated work, it is very difficult for a person to take into account both operation and maintenance management and promoting the project at the same time, this is not a human problem but an objective law.

With regard to the formation of the project team, there are mainly two kinds of linear organizational structure and matrix organizational structure, so just choose to suit the actual situation of your own company. In fact, both organizational methods are adopted in different companies, some companies have set up full-time tool building teams, and some companies recruit people from different operation and maintenance teams to form virtual working groups. One of the clients I worked with in the past, they launched the operation and maintenance development initiative to let everyone volunteer to join the operation and maintenance development study, and the effect is also very good.

4. Plan Plan

It is very difficult to make a plan, which will involve the question of route choice, whether to choose a fully independent R & D route or find a partner to support it.

Choosing an enterprise that relies entirely on its own strength is very brave and requires a lot of determination. This process needs to face a lot of problems, which is far from being satisfied by simply building some open source tools. Once embarked on the transformation of this road, it is difficult to stop, to solve the problem of automation, there are DevOps, AIOps waiting in front, facing the transformation gradually into the deep water area, the need to invest in human resources is huge, requires a lot of difficult technology.

Of course, some enterprises choose to follow the strategy. Now the operation and maintenance platforms opened by large Internet companies such as BAT are good options. For example, Tencent BlueKing Zhiyun, a PaaS development framework for building an integrated system of enterprise R & D and operation. Modules such as aPaaS (DevOps pipeline, running environment hosting, front and background framework) and iPaaS (continuous integration, CMDB, job platform, container management, data platform, AI and other atomic platforms) are provided to help enterprise technicians quickly build basic operation PaaS.

Rome was not built in a day, the transformation is not achieved overnight, it must be a continuous iterative process, the operation and maintenance of each company involves many technical areas, such as hardware, network, systems, applications, security, …... no, no, no. The steady-state business operation and maintenance of the traditional technology architecture has not been completely solved, and now it is a headache to face the container-oriented and micro-service agile business. ITOM, ITSM system has not yet played, and the emergence of DevOps, AIOps and other theoretical systems, where to go?

Where am I? Where are you going? [automation capability maturity]

5. Revenue Payback

Transformation requires constant effort and cost, and you have to think about the benefits of doing so in the early stages. We can consider it from three levels:

Economic benefits: the main embodiment is to reduce costs and increase efficiency, each enterprise is very similar from this level, due to the choice of route is different, I do not discuss too much here.

Capacity improvement: in the process of transformation, many capabilities will be built, such as machine learning, tool assembly line, etc., which will vary according to the actual situation of each enterprise and will not be discussed too much.

Organizational improvement: after the digital transformation of the operation and maintenance team, the personnel skills and organizational model may change. For example, the personnel composition will distinguish between operation and maintenance operators, operation and maintenance developers, operation and maintenance analysts, and operation and maintenance experts. The effect of the transformation will be related to the proportion of several types of personnel.

More related content:

An example of Digital Transformation of Internet Operation and maintenance

What do you mean by digitization and digital transformation?

After reading the above, do you have any further understanding of the digital transformation of operation and maintenance? If you want to learn more skills or want to know more about it, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel. Thank you for reading.

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