The most common IT pain points are human, not technological. But business must protect itself, so the IT department needs to ensure that tools and services are up to the task of handling staff demands. If handled well, technology can avoid the human errors that so often blight the system.

The first step is to remove the need for human management wherever possible. Introduce self-healing, self-detecting, proactive systems that can monitor networks and highlight issues, flagging for human intervention only when required.

It is nigh on impossible for an IT department to effectively track the running of a vast number of PCs and predict where the next issue will arise.

But if IT departments do not monitor and manage their networks, they will not have the adequate information to provide proactive support. It is impossible to get to the problem PC before the issue gets worse, potentially resulting in large losses. Monitoring systems can provide this specialist support to avoid loss of service ­ indicating any potential risks before they happen.

Companies typically use a human-controlled “red, amber, green” model to observe and react to issues. All too often support teams ignore red alarms because they are not issue-specific and occur too frequently. However, by tuning the system allowing it to think, learn and evolve directly from live operations humans can be removed from the monitoring process entirely and only notified when an issue becomes serious.

Instrumentation needs to be integrated into the design of IT systems in conjunction with the business throughout the project lifecycle and not merely restricted to the IT department. Processes need to be implemented and constantly adapted, so buy-in from all staff is essential.

People, process and technology need to be considered when implementing a system. Getting the right combination can drive down costs, improve efficiency and lead to improved user satisfaction.