Let me introduce myself: I’m Digitate’s recently appointed Chief Customer Officer. I would like to use this new monthly column to create a dialogue on how ignio can help to achieve business value while transforming IT operations.

This is my first column and I think it is important to explain why I’m here, what my mission is, and why I believe ignio is the right solution to fulfill it.

I’m here because I have been following my passion: how IT technology can optimize and improve operations.

In early 2016, I was the VP of IT for a big North American retailer. While in New Delhi for a TCS executive trip, during a break I was asked by the president of Canada operations for TCS if I was interested in reviewing a new IT management solution with an unusual twist. I’m curious by nature, so I said yes.

I was led into a basement meeting room where I was introduced to “Neo” (the old code name for ignio – and yes, that was a reference to “The Matrix”). I was immediately struck by this application’s potential. Powered by artificial intelligence, it was able to manage IT operations with the insight and autonomy of a virtual team of human technicians.

Unlike other IT management tools already on the market, “Neo” did more than just monitor IT events or reactively solve a single problem such as restoring a malfunctioning server. Its AI capacities and library of built-in IT knowledge meant it could predict problems – and even act autonomously to prevent them.

At the time I had been optimizing IT operations throughout my company’s chain of stores for quite a while. But I was at an inflection point and I needed a breakthrough to make our operations even more efficient and responsive. Neo, now renamed ignio, provided those capabilities. Moreover, it embodied enormous potential to address future use cases.

I was hooked. But I had to convince my CIO and all the other IT executives. Back then intelligent automation for IT operations was considered merely a novelty; IT executives were very careful not to proceed with what could have been just a science experiment. After long discussions and a testing process with the ignio lab team of nearly a year, in 2017 my company started deploying ignio in phases.

The first use cases deployed (including monitoring IT events, rebooting servers, and resolving SAP incidents) worked 98% of the time. Once implemented, ignio was reliable and effective. These great results encouraged my then-employer to start an aggressive transformation of our IT operations.

I have been an ignio fan ever since.

In fact, I became an ignio evangelist, starting in 2019 with a leadership role working closely with Digitate’s organization, where I drove the “ignio first” implementation philosophy at the international drugstore chain Walgreens-Boots Alliance. When Digitate decided earlier this year to create a Customer Success Office to drive success across our entire customer base, heading it felt like the natural next step for me.

When I’m asked what sets our offering ahead of our competitors, this is what I point out:

The ignio platform was designed as a holistic solution to transform your entire IT operations, not just a point solution with a few add-ons. It functions as the “brain” that autonomously drives your IT support: not as a disconnected set of use cases but as a single application that can leverage an enormous store of technology expertise to create a seamless virtual operation team. It also guarantees proper management and updating of all your custom use cases.

ignio is always available, always connected, and swift to react to incidents – even predict and prevent them. It’s built on cutting-edge AI and machine learning algorithms plus a vast library of IT use cases, reflecting 50 years of experience contributed by thousands of IT experts we’ve consulted at Digitate. In fact, it can span and automate up to 80 percent of your ITOps standard procedures (an impressive batting average for an AI solution).

I believe that ignio can transform how any organization manages IT operations. The initial benefits of adopting ignio at scale include improving IT environments’ availability and stability and reducing MTTR (Mean Time to Resolve a problem). Next, it can enable your most skilled resources to focus on more value-added tasks instead of spending their time in repetitive routines.

Lastly, ignio will help to drive a CEO’s agenda. More efficient ITOps management yields higher uptime, better customer experience, a more satisfied staff (freed from most of their mundane/repetitive tasks), lower overtime bills due to emergencies, and more efficient technology use, with less waste of resources both technical and human.

My mission as CCO is to partner with you, our customers, to adopt ignio as the platform to improve your IT operations. This journey is like hiking up a very tall mountain. Some organizations hesitate more to adopt AI-based solutions than other technologies because of assumptions that AI is uniquely hard to understand (and hire talent for), or long and expensive to implement. Well, my role is to be your guide. I have been there, and I can guide you to the top.

With this new column, my plan is to offer provocative conversation starters on how to leverage ignio to create business value from IT operations. I hope you’ll join the conversation. Feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn or email.

See you soon, let’s keep in touch!

Ugo