Tag Archives: AI Ops

How IT Leaders Can Give Employees The ‘Magic Touch’ with Tech

Most employees have had moments when workplace technology lets them down, and they wish they were someone with the ‘magic touch’ to make tech work and fix any problem. But what if IT departments had a helping hand that could give everyone the ‘magic touch’?

Ironically, many of the apps that are meant to make life simpler for employees are doing the exact opposite. In Malaysia, the digital skills gap among employees presents a significant challenge. A survey revealed that 74.5% of respondents identified a substantial gap between entry-level and advanced digital skills required in the workplace. This puts a burden on IT administrators to simplify the digital landscape wherever possible, removing hurdles and supporting employees in their day-to-day work.

Delivering the Magic Touch

For system administrators and people who are naturally ‘good with tech’, the ‘magic touch’ often comes from years of experience, technical qualifications and a willingness to try everything until something works. But can the digital workplace be delivered in a way which makes all employees feel like they have that ‘magic touch’ too?

AI-powered workplace solutions offer ways to make employees feel less frustrated with their technology while delivering a more personalized service. Harnessing AI ensures that IT teams are not overwhelmed with demands from colleagues. For the end user, generative AI chatbots let them make device decisions using plain language, with AI-infused device intelligence able to predict and fix software issues before they cause major problems, making managing and using their workplace IT feel effortless.

Harnessing the Power of AI

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The power of AI can help smooth over the sometimes counterintuitive processes that seasoned IT professionals are so accustomed to. At Lenovo, we have first-hand experience of these tools’ power as we use them ourselves. For example, our Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition that is operating on Windows 11 Pro. Seize the moment with the security to thrive anywhere and the performance to meet your boldest goals. Windows 11 Pro devices are easy to use and manage, with AI-enhanced efficiency and compatibility with existing technology including mission-critical apps and hardware. Devices with AI-guided knowledge bases can deliver ‘self-help’ and ‘self-heal’ solutions, regardless of whether employees are working at 10 am or 2 am. It is a bit like having your very own IT manager available on-call 24/7. For hybrid workforces, this powerful, instant support can be a game-changer, meaning that minor IT problems never progress to the point where they stop people working.

For service desk workers, AI can also bring powerful analytics, increasing the number of issues that can be solved pre-emptively, remotely and without the need for a ticket to be raised. This simplifies the day-to-day work of IT service desk teams, with an easy-to-use ‘single pane of glass’ portal delivering actionable insights in an easy-to-understand fashion.

Generative AI-powered platforms also anticipate the management of critical tasks to keep environments secure, while persona-based configuration means IT leaders can rapidly tailor suites of apps and services for different types of users. IT teams can ensure their colleagues get to work faster with the right tools at their fingertips, offering seamless and personalized digital experiences, removing hassle on both sides and freeing up IT teams to work on projects that will drive improvements and efficiencies across the workplace. In fact, 83% of CIOs expect AI to drive productivity gains within the next one to two years, further highlighting the transformative potential of AI in optimizing workflows and enhancing productivity.

Solving Problems Before They Happen

AI is also being used to predict common problems before they happen. This means devices are configured and patched so that employees always have the most up-to-date, secure and stable version of the software they need. IT managers can be freed from chasing seemingly endless day-to-day IT issues, and focus on transforming the way their businesses use technology. Managers are provided with proactive device insights and AI-driven predictive analytics which help keep devices running at peak performance, while they focus on the bigger picture and employees have a device that ‘just works’.

A Smarter Workplace

The workplace has changed beyond recognition in recent years, and today’s hybrid employees are switching between dozens of apps and learning new skills. Choosing the right managed service, such as Lenovo’s Digital Workplace Solutions, provides an AI-powered helping hand to both frontline employees and the IT managers helping to oversee their devices. For employees, this means personalized services and IT problems that are solved first time, making them feel like they have that ‘magic touch’ with their work PC. For IT departments, this spells a shift away from reacting to problems to anticipating them, and the freedom to focus on transforming the business through new technologies such as AI. Most importantly, more people benefit from the ‘magic touch’ and minimize downtime because of common IT issues.

Dell Technologies PowerStore Prime Comes with Increased Data Resiliency & AI Augmentation

Dell Technologies is bringing a slew of advancements to its PowerStore offering. The new offering delivers key improvements that augment and empower data resiliency, data and multi-cloud data mobility. With these improvements, Dell is also expanding its APEX portfolio with better, more powerful AIOps advancements and Kubernetes storage management.

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Dell’s PowerStore offering has been augmented with new features that increase performance, efficiency and security. The new PowerStore Prime offers quad-level cell (QLC) based storage. This lowers the cost per terabyte compared to previously used triple-level cell (TLC) based storage. With QLC-based storage, organizations can start with as little as 11 QLC drives and quickly scale up to 5.9 petabytes of effective capacity per appliance. Dell further augments this with intelligent load-balancing capabilities that are built into PowerStorage itself. This will optimise workload placement across QLC and TLC clusters leading to better cost efficiency and up to 66% uplift in hardware performance through data-in-place higher model appliance upgrades.

PowerStore Prime also comes with a bevvy of software updates that also help increase efficiency, security and cloud mobility. These advancements are part and parcel of PowerStore Prime which comes at no additional cost to existing customers. Dell will be providing updates that deliver up to 30% higher mixed workload performance and 20% lower latency. It also delivers fortified data protection with a vast array of choices that allow customers to safeguard and backup workloads with native synchronous replication of block and file workloads and native metro replication for Windows, Linux and VMWare environments. All of this is done with an uplift of 28% in power efficiency and 20% better data reduction. These simplified workloads also empower data mobility in multi-cloud environments giving users increased flexibility to scale thanks to its connectivity to Dell APEX Block Storage.

Dell APEX AIOps Delivers Greater Agility and Control

Together with Dell PowerStorage Prime, Dell Technologies is also augmenting Dell APEX with AI-driven features to deliver better agility and control. Dell APEX AIOps will be offered in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. It delivers better infrastructure health and transparency with AI-driven full-stack observability and incident management.

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APEX AIOps increases observability with AI-powered solutions that allow IT administrators to better address issues that arise. Dell claims that the increased infrastructure observability allows up to 10X quicker response times than traditional approaches. AI-powered health, cybersecurity and sustainability monitoring deliver actionable insights complete with detailed problem-solving recommendations. with AIOps customers are able to reduce reduction time by up to 70% with full-stack application topologies analytics. It can also deliver better uptimes and shorter recovery times with AI-driven incident management.

L R Deepak Waghmare Richard Jeremiah Mak Chin Wah
(From left) Deepak Waghmare, Chief Technology Officer at Dell Technologies (APJ), Richard Jeremiah, General Manager Data Centre & Compute Solutions – South Asia at Dell Technologies (APJ), and Mak Chin Wah, Country Manager (Malaysia) at Dell Technologies, addressing the media during the launch of the Dell PowerStore Prime offering in Malaysia

Dell’s APEX Navigator is also being expanded to include workloads on Kubernetes. This will simplify Kubernetes storage management on Dell PowerFlex and, in the near future, Dell PowerScale as well as Dell APEX Cloud Platforma for Red Hat OpensShift. This is achieved with expanded advanced services like data replication, application mobility and container observability.

Availability

Dell PowerStore’s software enhancements are available right now. PowerStore’s QLC model and data-in-place higher model appliance will be available starting in July. PowerStore multi-cloud data mobility and APEX Naivgator for Kubernetes will be available in Q2 2024 while APEX AIOps Infrastructure Observability and Incident Management will be available in October 2024.