It’s a new year, and that brings new challenges, technologies, and solutions. That’s why I asked two OpenText leaders—Srikanth Natarajan, VP of software engineering, and Adam Luciano, director of AI and incubation—what we can expect in 2024. Here are their predictions:
1. More generative AI
Adam Luciano
The biggest trend that we’ll see in the upcoming year is more generative AI, especially given the amount of value it unlocks. When you consider junior employees, GenAI will get them to the answers that are clear to someone with expertise. Its main purpose is to democratize information.
It’s similar to what smartphones have done for the world. What do you do if you have a question? You google it. You have that power in the palm of your hand, and it makes you able to answer so many questions. But even if you google something, you still have to synthesize the information you’re receiving. What’s happening now is that Large Language Models (LLMs) are taking that paradigm and bringing it into a conversation where multiple Google searches are not required.
From an IT Operations standpoint, GenAI enables users to understand what’s happening in these systems in a better and faster way. You don’t need to have all the context to ask the right question. GenAI will effectively translate complex system information into words that everyone can understand and act on.
Srikanth Nataraja
Next year will be the year to prove what’s working in GenAI and what’s not. The more GenAI is applied to use cases, the more valuable it is to users. Since Generative AI’s inception, it’s been a race to who builds an LLM first but just because someone gets there first, does that mean it really adds value to the customer?
What GenAI really does is recognize the probability of something happening. A great example is GenAI in ITSM, because case management is all about common interactions and conversations. It’s a bit harder to apply GenAI to unpredictable use cases, like troubleshooting a problem. AI plus predictive AI working together would be the way to go in the long run, and that’ll probably extend past 2024.
Ultimately, it’ll be more about getting information faster. It will become less of a conversation and more of a conversational experience, which Aviator is driving today. For example, you could say, “Generate the right dashboards” or “Show me the right contextual information around an event.”
2. Standardization across new applications
Adam Luciano
A lot of organizations are running into a knowledge gap—for example, between older applications and employees who don’t understand how they work. That’s why I’m excited about innovations like OpenTelemetry. It enables organizations to monitor their applications, easily instrument applications meaning adding code or using tools to collect data about behavior and performance.
OpenTelemetry is a standard that enables consistency across tools, which allows you to look at monitoring in a general, holistic way. If you have a standard “language”, you can pick your backend to analyze the data, which allows for more flexibility.
That’s not to say OpenTelemetry is going to change old applications unless they move into the cloud, but at least standardization might trigger that conversation. If you want to lift and shift to the cloud, you’re going to ask, “How do I monitor this?” and OpenTelemetry is a really good way to start. There’s the added benefit that it’s future-proofing your investment because it gives you the flexibility to make changes as needed. OpenTelemetry enables observability.
3. Cost management—still a priority
Srikanth Natarajan
The focus on cost management will continue in 2024. We see it in FinOps, where companies don’t realize they’re wasting resources in the cloud and then miss out on opportunities. Cost management is all about waste management. You have to manage costs and efficiencies while also prioritizing your investments. Without comprehensive observability, it’s challenging to understand where costs originate and to identify optimization opportunities.
For example, at OpenText we realized we were wasting a lot of cloud dollars, and we had to cut our expenses because they were not going to the right places. That doesn’t mean we stopped our cloud investment. It means we’re putting our money where it’s needed. There must be a link between cost and operations to drive more efficient operations.
Make your own prediction
In IT Operations, we’re often the first ones to see new innovations come in, but what predicted change will actually change the way we work in 2024? Let me know in the comments below.