This is Part 2 of our series breaking down Enterprise Management Associates’ (EMA) research on infrastructure modernization. [Read Part 1 here: The Prerequisite for Transformation].
Raw infrastructure telemetry is only useful if it can be transformed into visibility and insights anchored in meaningful business metrics. When EMA looked closely at metric priorities for enterprise IT initiatives, the data revealed a clear hierarchy.
Operationally, the highest-priority metrics centered on time-to-provision new services, security incident response, and change-management failure rates. Financially, optimizing the internal costs of delivering IT services (FinOps) led the charts.
The importance of using IT data intelligence to establish these baseline metrics was highlighted in EMA’s interview with a North American financial services enterprise during a massive Configuration Management System (CMS) deployment:
“We have linked a set of metrics to each one of our IT processes, but right now, our primary target is strict data accuracy. Soon, we’ll be able to measure how successful we are in blocking unauthorized changes and automating workflows. It’s a phased rollout—the advanced metrics will evolve, but only once the data foundation is secure.”
How Blazent Impacts Enterprise KPIs
EMA has documented Blazent’s direct impact on providing actionable visibility across a wide variety of operational metrics. When a CMDB is powered by automated data reconciliation, enterprises see immediate value across two distinct categories:
1. Change and Impact Metrics (DevOps & AIOps)
- Accelerated CI/CD Pipelines: More detailed and reliable dependency mapping allows DevOps teams to provision and deploy applications faster without breaking legacy systems.
- Zero-Outage Change Management: Improved service availability and minimized Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) by eliminating blind spots during automated infrastructure changes.
- Automated Disaster Recovery: Highly reliable dependency insights ensure that automated failover runbooks execute flawlessly during Sev-1 outages.
2. Asset and FinOps Metrics (Financial Credibility)
- FinOps Chargebacks: Improved IT credibility with business units because cloud consumption, software licenses, and physical assets are accounted for and charged back with 100% accuracy.
- Eliminating Shadow IT: Improved efficiencies in capacity planning due to absolute insight into “what’s out there, what it costs, and who owns it.”
- Transparent MSP Billing: Reconciled telemetry provides absolute billing transparency, resulting in massive savings for both Managed Service Providers and their enterprise clients.
The Characteristics of “Extremely Successful” IT Teams
When EMA cross-referenced the survey data to find out what separated the “extremely successful” IT teams from those who were “only somewhat successful,” clear prescriptive patterns emerged:
- The “Digital Dialog”:The most successful teams claimed a strict 50/50 partnership between IT and business stakeholders. IT was no longer operating as an isolated cost center.
- Technology as a Driver: “Extremely successful” respondents aggressively adopted automation. Crucially, the two technologies that most dramatically separated the successful teams from the failures were Data Quality Management and Automated CMDB/CMS platforms.
The EMA Perspective: Breaking Down Data Silos
Perhaps the single greatest takeaway from this research is that enhanced communication and automated workflows between IT and the business depend entirely on a solid, data-driven foundation. You cannot act as a proactive business partner if your data is fractured across isolated silos.
From conversations with Blazent customers, EMA concluded that Blazent delivers unique, industry-leading IT data intelligence. By auditing toolset coverage, reconciling conflicting multi-source telemetry, and providing enhanced visibility for governance audits, Blazent automates CMDB accuracy.
Blazent transforms fragmented “big data” into the actionable baseline required to run modern, automated IT operations.
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