It is no secret that artificial intelligence has moved from being just a futuristic technology to something that permeates nearly every aspect of our lives. AI has been impacting industries across the globe, and nowhere else is this transformation more palpable than in the IT sector. As traditional IT infrastructure becomes more complex and customer demands more specific and sophisticated, IT companies have been forced to become more agile and innovative. And to enhance operations and accelerate problem-solving, the sector has been leveraging the power of AI to deliver better solutions. Despite this transformation, most industry experts believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology: The Perfect Match  

While AI and IT might seem interchangeable due to their interwoven nature, on closer examination, they have distinctly separate identities. While AI and ML are designed to carry out human-like tasks such as learning, identifying patterns, processing information, and speech recognition, IT systems are all about storing, evaluating, and transmitting large amounts of data. AI is, thus, an avenue for the IT industry to transform its static systems into intelligent ones and scale its functionalities.  

Below are some of the most prominent ways in which AI is poised to transform the IT industry.  

 Creating Safer and Better Information Systems: Increasingly integrated IT systems across enterprise boundaries (vendors, partners, and customers), the use of SaaS applications, and the advanced nature of security threats have meant that traditional methods to deal with cybersecurity are no longer enough. Now businesses need agile and self-aware mechanisms to deal with potential security threats and data privacy issues. With their ability to use the vast amount of data from diverse sources to map user behavior patterns and detect anomalies, AI technologies can not only alert IT administrators but also temporarily isolate threats by preventing access to sensitive systems and data. Thus, the IT industry will see increasing adoption of AI in their operations as well as the operations of their clients.  

Similarly, AI can also help programmers to write better and bug-free code, thereby building better edifices for information systems that are more efficient. Artificial intelligence deploys various algorithms that can assist programmers in writing code and tackling software bugs that lead to glitches.  

Improved Customer Service: Customer service is often considered the bedrock of a successful business. Over the years, it has moved from becoming a manual job involving human customer service executives to becoming heavily automated. While virtual assistants (VA) are already in use, companies are also using Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to enhance VAs, making them more “context-aware.” Thus, enabled by AI, Virtual Assistants can now analyze a company’s input data and past patterns and provide users with correct suggestions and solutions to their problems.  

Further pushing the envelope is computer vision or CV technology that can be used to process images, videos, sounds, and all other kinds of dynamic data. ML algorithms can simulate and function akin to human vision, the only difference is that they can do this much faster and more accurately. Al can, thus, be a powerful tool for IT professionals and businesses to optimize their services and provide a better experience to their customers.  

AIOps: Due to the increase in complexity of the global IT landscape and the introduction of new kinds of workplace models like hybrid work, companies need a one-stop solution that simplifies their IT operations management - AIOps are these platforms. Gartner defines them as “platforms and software systems that combine big data and AI or machine learning functionality to enhance and partially replace a broad range of IT operations processes and tasks, including availability and performance monitoring, event correlation and analysis, IT service management, and automation.” In essence, AIOps cut through the silos that IT systems often tend to operate in and leverage the power of big data, ML, and analytics to automate tons of data, eventually creating a multi-level platform capable of comprehensive insight.  

 Thus it is evident that in 2023 and the years to come, IT operations will turn to artificial intelligence to help them navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape that is replete with challenges. 

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