ServiceNow AIOps - The Power of Metric Intelligence

Introduction

Last year I had the pleasure of implementing Metric Intelligence on the ServiceNow platform. I was surprised at the lack of documentation and community content on this application, so I thought I would put together some lessons I took away from implementing Metric Intelligence.

In this series I will give my perspective on why I think Metric Intelligence can be a highly effective tool within your enterprise. I will also provide detail on how Metric Intelligence works (the stuff they don’t tell you in the docs), including some Lessons Learnt. I hope this series helps anyone in a similar position to where I was last year.

What is Metric Intelligence

In my experience, Metric Intelligence is one of the most underutilised applications within the ITOM suite. However, if done right I believe it can be the most effective. Typically, most organisations are reactive to issues impacting their systems. Consequently, they wait for failures before acting, negatively impacting the organization’s perception of IT and resulting in costly outages. Metric Intelligence flips that on its head and doesn't wait for something to fail but instead looks for something out of the ordinary and flags it before it becomes a problem.

Imagine being able to fix something before it fails—like having a crystal ball predicting IT issues. That’s exactly what Metric Intelligence offers. Metric Intelligence consumes real time data and uses Machine Learning algorithms to map out typical behaviour. It continues to consume real time data and will raise the alarm if it notices something out of the ordinary such as slowdowns or spikes in resource usage, allowing your team to take the necessary action to prevent any failures.

Justify Investment

Before getting started, I recommend creating a business case to justify the investment in Metric Intelligence. This can help:

·      Quantify savings and gains

·      Justifying the investment with Return on Investment

·      Gain Executive buy-in and cross department support

·      Align IT with business objectives

Many of my recent clients prioritise Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Intelligent Automation for 2025. Metric Intelligence aligns with these objectives in multiple ways.

Security Use Case

One interesting use case I discussed with a client involved detecting unusual behaviour on a customer network. With the SolarWinds supply chain attack still in some people’s nightmares, it would be nice to know if a machine was being misused by bad actor. If the machines resources such as memory and / or CPU were to spike outside of the norm that may inform your I.T. teams that something unusual is happening and requires their attention.

Alignment with AI

Metric Intelligence has Artificial Intelligence (AI) baked into the product and supports your organisations AI objectives of 2025. Machine Learning algorithms such as KNN, Naïve Bayes, SVM, and Decision Trees generate statistical models that predict behaviour. As a result, Metric Intelligence provides teams with actionable insights to prevent costly issues, such as unplanned outages.

Operating Efficiency

Finally, I see a lot of NOC teams getting bogged down with manual repetitive tasks, swivel chairing between various systems to comb through thousands of alert records to find that one needle in a haystack. The Machine Learning Capability within Metric Intelligence can boost productivity of your team by taking away the tedious job of having to manually review thousands of alerts and instead present them with the most important alerts that needs their attention, whilst also reducing a lot of the noise by grouping Alerts together.

You are likely to be licensed for Metric Intelligence if you have ITOM Professional or Enterprise as it belongs to the ITOM Health Suite of tools. If so, is this shelfware an opportunity for your organisation to revolutionise your approach to managing IT from being reactive to proactive – why not give it a go?

Have you used Metric Intelligence in your organization? What challenges did you face?