BT doubles down on AIOps with Dynatrace for network service gains

BT Digital has revealed plans to consolidate all of its parent company’s application monitoring on the Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform as part of a new service management stack, with the target of having self-healing systems by 2025.

Dynatrace’s services will be deployed across the group, with a goal to simplify, add intelligence to and ultimately automate service operations in an AIOps model, supported by BT’s recently announced work with ServiceNow. This, said BT, will allow it to build early prediction and remediation, namely an estate that heals itself in real time.

With the integration of Dynatrace, BT is now confident that its teams will benefit from the consolidation of all data from across its multi-cloud environment, including fault detection, giving end-to-end visibility across the service path for any given customer need. In addition, Dynatrace AI and automation will be deployed to provide a deeper understanding of digital services, deriving signals from noise with root cause and delivering resilient operations for all applications and microservices.

BT noted that Dynatrace has already started adding value to its teams. In initial roll-outs, BT noted that Dynatrace was able to identify issues in real time, instead of 30 minutes after the fact, as was standard in its old paradigm.

It added that the new deep observability and advanced AIOps capabilities delivered by the new software have reduced mean time to identify faults, ahead of self-healing capabilities being deployed, well ahead of its target reduction of 50%. The expectation is that this will drive cumulative internal savings of £28m by 2027, in addition to a previously identified £25m of value from the ServiceNow implementation.

“Dynatrace, coupled with ServiceNow, gives us precise insight into our technology estate and consolidates all data in a single pane of glass,” said Jim Dempsey, director of service at BT. “It will let us improve predictability and drive faster resolutions, driving better customer experience.”

Mike Maciag, Dynatrace’s chief marketing officer, said: “We are thrilled to work with the BT Group’s digital teams to simplify service operations and build a self-healing system, including automated closed-loop remediation with ServiceNow. The result will free BT’s teams from manual tasks so they can focus on accelerating digital transformation to deliver consistently better business outcomes.”

BT’s digital unit includes accountability for IT, digital innovation, BT-wide business transformation, and data and product strategy. It began life aiming to lead the digital innovation agenda, with an early focus on the development and rapid delivery of innovative products, platforms and services in key areas such as healthcare and data.

The unit has a continued focus on network leadership and partnership with customer-facing units on converged services and experiences, and BT has said the unit will aim to use the strength of its networks to differentiate its services for its customers. Product strategy, business transformation, data and artificial intelligence will also form part of the new digital unit.