It would be a dream scenario if a “single pane of glass” truly existed for information technology managers to closely monitor every aspect of the enterprise infrastructure. It’s still a dream, which is why Cisco Systems Inc. and ScienceLogic Inc. have both learned a great deal from their 10-year partnership to support infrastructure monitoring in the enterprise.

“What my team realized is it really isn’t about a single system to rule them all; it’s about trying to find multiple platforms that could work together and really share data to drive richer insights,” said Bailey Szeto (pictured), vice president of sales, channels, marketing and services, IT, at Cisco. “I think maybe the industry has been on the wrong path. It’s not ‘Lord of the Rings,’ one ring to rule them all.”

Szeto spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the ScienceLogic Symposium in Washington, D.C. They discussed how Cisco manages the technological complexity created through acquisitions and the future role of automation for infrastructure monitoring (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Acquisitions add complexity

Cisco is ScienceLogic’s largest enterprise customer, according to Szeto, and much of the collaboration between the two companies focuses on managing added layers of technology within the Cisco infrastructure whenever the company acquires a new business.

“It’s a blessing in that we get this great new technology to incorporate and use in our running of the business, but it also adds a lot of complexity,” Szeto explained. “It’s pretty important that we have both the systems and processes to be able to manage all of that complexity in our infrastructure.”

Will automation be the salvation for infrastructure monitoring in the future? It’s entirely possible, yet Szeto believes there is still much work to be done.

“Artificial intelligence is really good at pattern recognition, but you still need to put checkpoints in and have human beings check the work,” Szeto said. “We actually have seen data center outages, not Cisco, but in the press when AI runs amok. I certainly wouldn’t want to trust our multi-billion-dollar business to AIOps at this point in time.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the ScienceLogic Symposium. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the ScienceLogic Symposium event. Neither ScienceLogic Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE