The dreaded monthly operations and application meeting is edging near. You know which meeting we’re talking about: the one where all the Ops teams get together to talk about what they are seeing, about application enhancements and modifications, potential improvements, and often – about their frustrations!

It’s been said hundreds of times: in the digital era, customers tolerate no downtime. IT operations teams must keep systems running 24x7x365, as the price of downtime is steep. According to Gartner, in 2014, organizations lost $5,600 per minute of downtime, which worked out to well over $300,000 per hour. Today, it’s likely higher, as organizations increasingly rely on technology to power revenue-generating business services.

IT operations is at a crossroads. The increasing complexity of IT infrastructure and software is challenging IT teams and the business. So this year we decided to focus our survey on what IT Ops execs, managers and practitioners think about the current state of their operations, the future of their systems and the role automation and AIOps might play in their transformation.