Case Study : Accelerating digital transformation and reducing environmental impact

BlueIT is on a mission to achieve these two objectives through its IT outsourcing services. “Being a benefit company, we are committed to helping our clients implement an IT strategy that not only assures performance but also supports their sustainability goals and puts them on a path to reducing carbon emissions,” explains Francesco Sartini, Chief Innovation Officer at BlueIT. Presently, BlueIT provides direct IT outsourcing for 35 different clients. Its services are industry-agnostic, and its current client base includes organizations in manufacturing, technology, financial services, entertainment, retail, as well as food and beverage.

A major priority for BlueIT right now is its shift from traditional ITOps to AIOps. “For our organization and our clients, the adoption of AIOps is not just a technological project. It is an organisational paradigm shift,” notes Sartini. Key to this transition is BlueIT’s ability to offer clients a comprehensive view of their entire IT environment from the application layer down to the infrastructure, and its ability to help clients proactively reallocate resources to reduce waste and improve application performance. This is why BlueIT uses the IBM® Turbonomic® Application Resource Management (ARM) and IBM Instana® Observability solutions.

The sustainability paradigm in IT rests on an organization’s ability to achieve the right balance between resource allocation and end-user experience. In my opinion, implementing Turbonomic and Instana is without a doubt the best way to right-size your infrastructure and reduce your carbon footprint without sacrificing performance.

Francesco Sartini
Chief Innovation Officer, BlueIT

Observability + resource optimization

Sartini and his team provide services that fall under three main areas of focus: ITIL Services, Cognitive Services and Business Services. Their services include but are not limited to multicloud management, application performance management, continuous vulnerability and compliance monitoring as well as application resource management. Their typical clients have between 100 and 500 servers, and they maintain environments that are on-premises, in Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and on hybrid cloud. BlueIT’s team also manages 50 SAP landscapes. “Today, when onboarding a new client, we start by deploying Turbonomic and we turn to Instana to assure application performance during clients’ critical releases,” explains Sartini.

Given the heterogeneity of their clients’ environments, it is critical that Sartini and his team have the tools they need to onboard each new client efficiently and continuously optimize application performance moving forward. Ease of deployment and time to value are key. “We have found that the initial setup of Turbonomic and Instana is simple and immediate,” notes Sartini. In the course of a single day, both tools can be deployed and start proactively identifying resizing opportunities. Instana has a single agent that can be installed in a matter of minutes, while Turbonomic can be installed in a matter of hours. “When onboarding a new customer, we can now show them in just a few clicks how Turbonomic and Instana can work in their own environment,” explains Sartini. Turbonomic provides AI-powered application resource management, while Instana provides infrastructure monitoring and observability. “Each tool has an exhaustive dashboard that is easy to navigate and provides actionable insight right away,” notes Sartini.

Medium shot looking through server rack of male IT professional working in data center

We have found that the initial setup of Turbonomic and Instana is simple and immediate. When onboarding a new customer, we can now show them in just a few clicks how Turbonomic and Instana can work in their own environment. Each tool has an exhaustive dashboard that is easy to navigate and provides actionable insight right away.

Francesco Sartini
Chief Innovation Officer, BlueIT

Scaling performance and sustainability

Since shifting to AIOps, BlueIT has seen strong improvements in performance and resource allocation. For example, with the help of Turbonomic and Instana, the BlueIT team has achieved a 50% reduction in mean time to recovery (MTTR) and a 60% reduction in the time required to implement a resourcing action. Furthermore, they have reduced waste across their clients’ environments. For one client, BlueIT achieved a 10% reduction in memory and CPU over-allocation after executing Turbonomic’s AI-powered resourcing recommendations. Increasing the utilization of their clients’ existing infrastructure, and eliminating any unutilized resources, is an important step in their journey to help clients reduce carbon emissions.

As they move forward, the BlueIT team is aiming to shift from Turbonomic’s resourcing recommendations to its automated resourcing actions, and they are looking to increase their clients’ adoption of Instana. Finally, they are planning to implement IBM Cloud Pak® for Watson AIOps. “We are excited to explore how IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps can support us in Event Correlation. We want everyone across the organization to have the same level of information and use the same collaboration tool whenever there is a critical situation. ChatOps will be very instrumental in helping us adopt an AI-based Root Cause approach,” explains Sartini.

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