Getting IT right in the age of AI: Lessons from a Silicon Valley veteran | Girish Bhat
In this episode of ITOM Spotlight, we sit down with Girish Bhat, Senior VP of GTM at Revifi, who has spent decades building, managing, and launching enterprise IT, security, and AI products at pioneering companies including Splunk, Cisco, Netscout, and Sumo Logic.
With experience spanning engineering, product management, marketing, and GTM leadership, Girish brings a 360° perspective on how IT operations have evolved — from traditional alert-based monitoring to autonomous, AI-driven systems.
We unpack how IT leaders can align observability with business goals, bridge the skill gap, and prepare for the AI-powered future of ITOps.
We discussed:
- What’s remaining constant through decades of IT evolution
- The four guiding pillars for modern IT operations success
- How to justify change and quantify its business impact
- The real way to close the IT skill gap—by building from within
- Why observability and security are converging
- Data management best practices for hybrid environments
- The role of agentic AI in shaping the next era of IT operations
- How to evaluate modern observability tools beyond cost and features
Guest: Girish Bhat, Senior Vice President – GTM, Revifi
Host: Sharon, Senior Solutions Expert, ManageEngine
Time stamps:
00:00 – Intro: Girish’s journey
02:04 – What’s unchanged through IT’s evolution
02:51 – The different dimensions to the tech business
04:45 – Prioritizing change and manage competing needs
05:43 – The four guiding pillars for effective IT operations
08:00 – How IT admins can justify the need for change
08:57 – Quantifying the impact of technology decisions
11:19 – Fixing the skill gap in IT
12:12 – Building talent internally: culture and structure
15:56 – How hands-on engineers can stay relevant
17:53 – The convergence of observability and security
18:35 – Why IT and security split and how the cloud changed it
21:24 – Metrics that link IT and security ops
23:19 – Platform vs. point solutions for observability-security ops
25:11 – Data management: in-house vs. vendor-driven
25:51 – Data optimization best practices
28:30 – Transitioning from point tools to platforms
31:29 – Agentic AI in observability: reality or hype?
33:22 – Evaluating tools: why workflow alignment is key
33:54 – Girish on ManageEngine’s evolution and growth
36:15 – Advice for orgs evaluating observability tools
38:12 – Closing remarks
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