The concept of digital operations, or DigitalOps, is very much on the minds of information technology organizations today. The global pandemic has placed greater pressure on IT not only to transform entire companies into fully digital platforms but to keep them operationally efficient as well.

Research from McKinsey & Company has showed that organizations successfully making digital transformations are also more likely to embed digital technologies into operations. This is the model that has enabled firms such as PagerDuty Inc. to play a central role in the DigitalOps movement.

“PagerDuty really facilitates a cultural shift leveraging a [developer operations] culture and methodology which allows companies to empower people closest to the action to make better decisions,” said Jennifer Tejada (pictured), chief executive officer of PagerDuty. “Traditional ways of solving technology problems were ticketing systems and command and control environments that would take hours or maybe days to resolve issues. We don’t have that time anymore, and DigitalOps is all about instantly detecting an issue.”

Tejada spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during PagerDuty Summit 2020, where the company introduced a raft of new and upgraded services. They discussed the role of “front-line” digital operations staff during the global pandemic, rising financial impact of system downtime and avoiding organizational burnout. (* Disclosure below.)

Keeping platforms operational

DigitalOps has taken on special meaning over the past several months as major, brand-name PagerDuty customers, such as Zoom Video Communications Inc., Netflix Inc. and exercise media company Peloton Inc. have all experienced sharp increases in platform use. This has placed IT operations teams in a position to provide front-line services for ensuring these platforms remain smooth and operational in the face of unprecedented demand.

“The thing about the digital front line is they can be invisible; you don’t necessarily see them because they’re behind the scenes trying to manage all the complex technology that makes an on-demand Peloton class efficient and amazing for you,” Tejada said. “Anything we can do as a platform to automate more of this work for the digital front line is really our focus.”

Earlier this month, PagerDuty released a global study that revealed over half of respondents indicated the pressure to keep digital services running perfectly had reached unprecedented levels over the past three to six months. Some of this was attributable to increased demand and technological complexity, but the financial stakes have gotten higher as well.

“It can be very frustrating when all of those little pieces backed by very complex technology don’t come together beautifully, and that’s where PagerDuty brings the power of automation, the power of data and intelligence, and increasingly orchestrates all of this work,” said Tejada, who noted the business impact for even one minute of downtime. “We’ve seen that cost of a minute. If you lost $100,000 during a disruption last year, you’re maybe losing half a million dollars a minute now when your app is disrupted.”

In addition to the financial impact, there is also the human factor to be considered as well. Increased pressure on IT means further stress on the people responsible for running operations, and PagerDuty plays a supportive role in helping to avoid staff burnout.

“We can heat map your team for you and help you understand who in your team is experiencing the most incident response stress,” Tejada said. “We look at operations through the lens of humanity.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of PagerDuty Summit 2020. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for PagerDuty Summit 2020. Neither PagerDuty, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE