Join Eveline Oehrlich and Suresh GP for a discussion on Why an AIOps Certification is Something You Should Think About

Transcript

Narrator: You’re listening to the Humans of DevOps podcast, a

podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,

knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the skil framework.

Suresh GP: I’m a big fan of sacred lab in genetic right. I

do a lot of work on consulting coaching on site allottee.

Engineers and I, as I start with a lot of the operations teams,

they are leveraging these new approaches because reliability

is becoming the most important question at a board level.

Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to the humans of DevOps Podcast. I’m

Evelyn early Chief Research Officer at people search. Our

podcast title today is navigating the future. deep dive

on a AI ops certification. Very exciting topic, very close and

dear to my heart. And we have a very special person with us

today. We have Shor’s GP who is the managing director at Tao

solutions. Hello, Suresh.

Suresh GP: Hey, Evelyn. Thanks for having me at this podcast,

really looking forward for some great conversation today.

Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, likewise. So let me share quickly show us

your background with our listeners so that they know who

they are dealing with, because I think that’s quite important. So

sure, she is the managing director of top solutions in

Singapore, USA and India. He is one of the top 2021 CRMs. He is

top 25 influencers in the ITSM by HDI and also a global

ambassador of DevOps Institute, which is where shrewish and I

actually have met. He is the co author of the SRE practitioner

and observability foundation course of DevOps Institute. He

has over 22 years and more industry. And he’s a respected

thought leader in areas of ITSM, DevOps, Site Reliability

Engineering, and PRM. And he provides consulting coaching for

Fortune 2000 organisations. So shortage, my first question is,

what does top solution stand for?

Suresh GP: Well, it’s a great question that you asked me, top

solution stands for taking you beyond. So when we started top

solutions, in 2014, we wanted to build a company that took our

customers business partners to envision business outcomes. So

wherever they are in the journey of transformation, as we all

call it, we want to take them in to envision business outcomes.

So top was playing the role of consulting coaching training

organisation to take them beyond.

Eveline Oehrlich: Super. Wow, I love that, that that is really

sharing some passion there you have with customers. And I’ve

always noticed that with you every time we had interacted in

the larger group, which led leads me to you’ve been an

ambassador for the DevOps Institute since 2019. Is that

correct? Yeah, that’s right. That’s absolutely right. Great.

So first of all, thank you, and congratulations to have such a

long journey. And I, you and I have not met in person. So we

have to put that on our dance card, as I like to say, but

besides that, tell us a little bit about the role of an

ambassador, how, what is it? And how has that helped you?

Suresh GP: Absolutely. I think, if you remember, if I remember

correctly, I was the first DevOps Institute Ambassador

picked up by the DevOps Institute, way back in 2019. And

that’s a very great honour, right? So DevOps Institute was

looking at improving their brand equity by handpicking

ambassadors across the globe, right. So the purpose of being

an ambassador was to spearhead the humans of DevOps as you and

I know, we’ve been very passionate about spearheading

the humans of DevOps. So the primary objective of being an

ambassador was to share knowledge and wisdom across

people. Now, if I look at what is that helped me over the

years, being an ambassador for the last five years now, it’s

been an amazing opportunity to do knowledge sharing in terms of

skill updates, skill up events, DevOps meetup days, and helping

people to build DevOps capability. Now, one of the

things that fitted, fitted to my mission, as part of running top

solutions was to make an impact to people globally in the form

of consulting, coaching and training. And for me, there’s so

much joy when you give back to the community, right? And I’ve

always believed Evelyn, that if you don’t give back to the

community, then it’s a crime because we have got so much

benefits by being a part of this cohort by being part of the

larger mind share. And it is only appropriate to give and

share learnings and also help and mentor people. And I think

for me, that has been a fulfilling my personal mission

and as actually made a lot of friends and network across the

globe.

Eveline Oehrlich: very honourable and impact you have

made absolutely I can see that. And then when you said 2019, and

five years ago, I’m thinking, Is it really five years ago? Oh my

god, that is very scary. Okay. Let us continue. So I say you

are also an instructor, but I think you said you don’t like

the word instructor but I still will say tell me a little bit

about that role at at DevOps Institute and what you’ve been

doing so in this role,

Suresh GP:

Eveline Oehrlich:

Suresh GP:

Eveline Oehrlich:

Suresh GP:

Eveline Oehrlich:

Suresh GP:

Eveline Oehrlich:

Suresh GP: Right. So I would call myself as a facilitator

Evelynn rather than instructor I’ve been always passionate to

teach marignan best practices and best practice framework

since 2014. As a trainer or facilitator, I learned a lot

from the participants, right, and the opportunity to deliver

engagements, both physically and virtually remember, prior to

COVID-19. Were doing a lot of those training programmes and

was integrated workshop physically. And it’s been an

enriching experience, right. For me, it’s also the passion of

giving back, as I said in the earlier question, and it also

reinforces when I was awarded the best coach or trainer award

by the business relationship management institute in 2019, at

New Orleans, and it was a testimonial to provide great

value to participants. And for me, it is also to instil the

habit of continuous learning, because one of the things that I

believe truly as a facilitator is to keep ourselves on a

continual learning spree. But also make sure that we are well

aware and acute with all the latest trends. And you know

better because you do a lot of research in terms of providing

value added content for people in the industry. So make it a

practice to execute myself with industry leading certifications,

that has helped me to connect the dots over various aspects.

This is particularly important because a lot of these training

programmes or workshops, you get people from different

backgrounds who come there and connect. So you will have people

from development, infrastructure operations, testing, project

management, ci organisations, so it has helped me to connect the

dots with various leading best practices and frameworks,

including DevOps, ITIL, app engineering, observability, and

EOPS.

Eveline Oehrlich: And in the AI ops, we have a common passion.

As you might remember, maybe in one or the other meetings, we

discussed AI ops, I’ve been researching and advising in my

previous career at Forrester Research on the topic of

application performance management. And this topic,

interestingly, has changed in morphed into multiple topics

today. It’s actually there’s an entire new paths, in particular

growth and adoption around AI in IT operations. And if we think

about AI ops, and it’s, it’s, it’s origine really was defined

by a analyst friend of mine at Gartner. And it really was a

simpler definition at the time in terms of AI ops was the

adoption of AI in terms and in ways IT operations to make it

much easier for folks in IT ops to analyse and predict things

before they could cause impact. And that’s kind of the backdrop

I wanted to share. But before we get into a AI ops, you’ve been

doing work around this. And you’ve, I’m sure have some

thoughts and on the expansion of APM into AI ops and

observability. Were in it. This couple of questions here. So

give us your thoughts on this entire APM into AI ops and

observability. And then where in it? Are these new approaches to

monitoring us to are these users who are the target audience for

AI ops APM does still exist? observability? What are your

thoughts around all of that?

Suresh GP: That’s a great question, Evelyn. So I think

thanks a lot for your work around the application

performance management space, that has revolutionised the way

we look at the whole ecosystem today, right? Today, if you look

at a lot of our customers, they are looking at the end user

experience, right. So today, we are living in an attention

deficient syndrome, and even a single minute of downtime is

going to make them make people paranoid about it. Now, we are

traditionally focused on monitoring this at a server

level. But then I think this whole proliferation of devices

that we are dealing with tablets, desktops, mobile

devices, has brought us the whole client specific

information. And I think APM does a great job to look at

providing us great insights towards user experience from the

client side part. It is only logical for APM. aspect to go

into the predictive aspects. Remember, in the earlier word,

we used to do reactive from an incident management standpoint,

everything some happened, something broke down an accident

server going off, we actually did something to fix that. So it

was more reactive as part of incident management, then we

started to move towards event monitoring, as well as the

overall correlation engine, where we kind of becoming a

little more proactive, determining the thresholds and

aspects in which we wanted to start with. But now the world is

changing. A lot of our customers that we are dealing with are

saying how can you be more predictive? We don’t want to be

the same level of reactive and proactive because we have

invested a lot of time and efforts on processes, best

practices, tools, and also on the skill side. So can you help

us to move into that predictive space? Now, that’s where the

real genesis of AI ops becomes very important, because APM

tools give you a little bit of an understanding around what’s

good, what is the probably the problematic areas and you’re

able to nail down. But I think we need to move towards that

element of predictability. So a lot of people do ask us about

difference between monitoring and observability, just for all

our viewers monitoring is telling you the symptoms, right?

It tells you something is broken, but it doesn’t tell you

exactly what is broken. So but observability, on the other

hand, is able to give you a little bit of identifying root

causes, right? And root causes is not just one to one, there

could be one too many reasons why something failed. And that’s

an area that I think is important to assimilate to make

that work. So that probably answers your first question. The

second one, where he talked about who is the user of these

automation? Or where are we applying it? I’m a big fan of

cycle app engineering, right? I do a lot of work on consulting

coaching on site allottee engineers. And I, as I start

with a lot of the operations teams support teams and SR ease,

they are leveraging these new approaches, because reliability

is becoming the most important question at a board level.

Right? So gone are the days that we were just talking about

keeping the lights on Bau that is gone off, right people are

looking at now to become reliability is the most

important first class citizen. Now if you’re asking reliability

to be the first class citizen, how are we going to even make

this work? So this requires us to have new approaches to move

towards that predictive service management option. And for me,

all the saris and operations team are looking at what can I

do to self heal and auto remediation options because at

the end of the day, we talk a lot about these style, right, we

spent way too much time on resolving incidents. So we are

not leveraging the power of a ops. So hopefully, with a ops

with predictability, can we actually bring in that level of

runbook automation self scripts, which will help us to do self

healing and auto remediation because it will do two things,

it will reduce recoil, it will improve my productivity, and we

can focus on things that really makes the most important sense.

So for me, those are the real people who are really looking

out for leveraging AI ops to make their life and the

organisation better.

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Eveline Oehrlich: You know, as a literally old IT ops person, I

would just want to go back to my role I had many years back,

leveraging this type of technology. So very exciting.

Thank you. Let’s get to the meat of our conversation, which is

your work on the AI ops certification? today. So people

sorted in DevOps Institute, one can get certified for AI ops

tell us shores? What does that entail? Are there any

prerequisites one has to go and have before that? How difficult

is it what we’ll want to learn? Tell us a little bit about the

certification course because I really would like the audience

to get excited about it. And of course, take and get certified

so that they can actually do some very amazing things in

their role.

Suresh GP: Absolutely. I think AI Ops is pretty hot on the on

the block, I call is that a opsis? That new kid on the block

with DevOps Institute peoplecert certifications? It’s a two day

course. It’s well curated by experienced practitioners

telling us, what is the value of AOPs? But your first question,

this is a two day course delivered by people sir DevOps

Institute partners. So top solutions is one of the elite

partners of the DevOps Institute. So who can be

attending this session like anyone from IT support IT

operations predominantly, because it’s talking about AI in

the, in the view of Operation setup, right. So if you are from

it servicemen background, if you are from an IT operations

background, you want to leverage the power of air ops to reduce

incidents, because that’s going to be a very important key era

that has that would become a much more important exercise.

Now, one of the things we are very passionate about as top

solutions is that we offer a range of certification courses,

that fits very logically. Now, I’m trying to bring this because

you’ve asked this question of what are some of the

prerequisites. Now what we have seen in the last eight to nine

years, as we have started to work with the DevOps Institute

products, we we have a big fan following when we started off

with site lab engineering foundation, then they actually

enhance their career options towards Cipherlab engineering

practitioner. And then we moved on to observability Foundation,

because in SRE practitioner, we only focused on one module on

observability. And they wanted to have a dedicated aspect of

observability, because the whole trend of moving from monitoring

and observability became more more important sense. So as

people went on through the observatory Foundation, they

understand in the maturity model, one of the important

aspects of the maturity model is becoming more towards

predictability. And that’s where the aiops really fits in, very

logically. And that’s how this AOPs foundation course is being

structured. So as far as the content is concerned, I want to

give you a high level topics of what we cover in the two day

programme. So we first set the context of what is a ops in the

organisational context, right? What are the core technologies?

So we talk a little bit about data, we talk about machine

learning, we also start to focus on what are your operation

metrics, because typically, the operations team have the first

call resolution, they look at response time resolution time,

MTTR, NT TD. Now, how does that all play out with the advent of

AI ops, because we need to make sure that this is helping them

to make an impact in the way that they solve incidents. It’s

becoming more proactive. So we also share some of those

practical use cases of how AI ops can be beneficial because

what I’ve seen is a lot of people are asking for what kind

of use cases can I pick up that we can start implementing

because this certification programme is not just to give

you the principles, the philosophy, the practices, but

also instilling a level of curiosity, of how can I pick up

some of these learnings that I’ve had in the two day

workshop? Back to your workplace, and it’s also about

the mindset and we you and I know very much as part of

transformations. It’s also a bringing up the cultural

mindset, the cultural nuances of thinking, how can we work as a

team to holistically fullest facilitate this whole

transformation? So we talk a little bit about evaluating the

aiops impact. And finally, the proof is on the on the pudding.

Right? So we talk about implementing AI ops in the

organisation. So what we also do, Evelyn as part of this work

workshop because we have designed it, we give some

practical use cases and demo how we went about implementing AI

ops in organisation that is very fascinating for people because

you can learn a lot of theory about people process technology.

But how does it all work together in tandem? And how can

we make that more practical? And that’s where I think there’s a

lot of value in people getting that benefit of AI ops and

relating it to the workplace.

Eveline Oehrlich: Sounds like an exciting two days, certainly, I

think. Now, the next question, you’ve already alluded a little

bit towards it, but I’ll ask it again, it’s, it’s in two parts.

We know it’s not just done to have a certification right as a

single person, because the approach of AI Ops is actually

beyond what one person potentially can do relative to

automation of the challenges around services and software and

availability. And as you stated so beautifully the reliability

as a first class citizen, I love that, by the way, it’s certainly

a great opportunity for people out there who are wanting to

advance their careers. But so here comes the question, What

can one expect as a once a person has gone through the

certification? Is this worth a promotion? Is this a change in

role is the more money? Other benefits? I think you like I

said, You alluded to a few of those things already. So that’s

the part one of the question. I’ll pause, and then we’ll go to

part two. Sure.

Suresh GP: So that’s a great question. Because at the end of

the day, Evelyn, you and I know very well, right, people are

investing time and effort and money, right? What is the return

on investment? Let’s be very clear, right? So a lot of times

we do this intake process, Evelyn, where we ask these

questions, you know, why are we attending this course, you know,

sometimes they say that my manager asked to attend this

course, that’s why I’m doing it, or I want to go to a career

progression. So we really want to understand the needs of your

audience. And I think that’s very important, because each and

every one has got their own expectations, in involvement,

interest, and stuff like that. So but what I’ve seen over and

beyond, in the last six, seven years that I’ve actually been in

the training space, one of the most important reasons people

attend these workshops is to become relevant in the digital

age, you and I know with all this chat, GPT and generative

AI, there’s a huge push, and people are trying to reevaluate

themselves to see whether I still remain relevant. Do I know

things that are making me competent to be at the

workplace, because there is always a threat to humanity in

terms of whether the robots and AI is will replace people. But I

always believe that there’s a lot of work that human beings

can do. And that’s why we do this episode of humans of

DevOps, but how to make one productive, right? Because with

a lot of things that people are juggling day today, it’s

important for people to be more productive to focus on things

that really matter the most, which means we need to leverage

technology advancement to make it more impactful to the

business at the end of the day, or to be harnessed the business

doesn’t care about whether it’s DevOps, SRE, a ops machine

learning observability, they want to really look at

profitability, improve market share, ensuring reliability,

improving customer experience. So we need to understand various

scenarios and use cases. And for me, this will become a very

important part of addressing the needs of the business. Because

to be honest, if you want to get your promotions, if you want to

have a pay raise, you have to solve real world problems. If

you want to solve real world problems, it also means that we

need to understand what’s the burning or challenge that your

organisation faces. And I tell jokingly, if you want to get

promoted, you need to solve your boss problem. And then you get

advanced in your career ahead. So that’s my thought around this

whole space of what people gain stand to gain. What is it for

me, when they go about these certification programmes?

Perhaps one caveat is attend these courses with someone who

is practitioner, right? So we are not teaching a course by

death by PowerPoint. But bringing in the real world

experience, people can interface and understand how we can apply.

Eveline Oehrlich: Well said, now take that up one level and share

with us a little bit about the bigger approach for the team.

You already said that for the business. But I think what I’d

love to see is a little bit more around, what can I do to bring

the team along right? And how can I impact the rest of the

site reliability engineers or others, beyond my own career?

What are your thoughts there?

Suresh GP: That’s a great one, right? So I always want to start

with a quote, right if you want to move faster, walk alone, but

if you want to move farther, walk along with your team. So

it’s absolutely important to carry your team along and I call

this as a cohort, pod squad, whatever you call it is right

because As at the end of the day, it’s the team that matters.

Right? So having said that, I think each and every one in the

value chain will have to play that infinite game like what

Simon Sinek plays, right? So you need to continuously improve

yourself to be a better version of yourself, call it as version

two, version three, or version 2023 in a way that we can

improvise the whole aspect of doing it. So I asked and, and

request a lot of people who go through the certification,

whether your individual start thinking about the big picture,

right? What is your role? And what is your overall focus as a

company as a product as a service company? As a cohort?

What do you want to achieve? Right? How are your roles

typically fitting, so it could be a sight lap engineer, you

could be a DevOps engineer, you could be an operational

specialist, think about what is your current role that you’re

playing in? So what is the focus of end goal? So you can call it

as k RAS? You can call it as OKRs. You can call it as KPIs,

whatever you call, what is your end objective? What’s the

outcome that we are envisioning to keep this done? Now, you all

know that the whole landscape is changing pretty fast. And we

have to adapt and adapt to the changing lifecycle, right? So we

call it the Guca. World of volatile, uncertain, complex,

ambiguous word. So what it means is that we have to reevaluate

our processes look at process reengineering, look at the tool

stack of tool chain that we are having, and seeing what does it

take us for making this shift moving forward? So I ask people

to come with a curious and inquisitive mindset, because

when it comes to the programme, you’re not just coming up for

the ticking the box to get yourself certified, but start

thinking about what problems should I address going back to

the workplace. So please make a note of having your questions

listed down when you come from this programme, because you

might not get all the answers immediately. But at least you

will start thinking on those lines. That’s the first thing,

understand the big picture. And for me, it’s also about

continuous learning and improvement, you don’t learn

just by doing certification programme or reading books,

attend meetups, this DevOps meetups, the skill updates, the

podcast that we are all talking about, because you get a lot of

wisdom from these people who are passionately sharing day in and

day out. And more importantly, think about how you can

contribute back to the workplace because there’s no much fun,

even if they don’t contribute back, because then I feel a

sense of belonging, that I’m not just worried about my career, my

progression, I’m not selfish enough. But I want to give back

to the team. And if everybody in the value chain resonates with

that philosophy, then how can I make my life my job my business

a lot more productive? Effectively? You think it’s

gonna be magical? I think that’s a man, one of my final code is

that you don’t think like, how do you build high performing

teams, high performing teams are not built by high performers.

Frankly, it’s ordinary people doing ordinary things

extraordinarily well. So how can you have ordinary people doing

ordinary things extraordinary? Well, because you’re driven by a

purpose, you’re driven by the big picture of making an impact.

And if everybody starts to think with that purpose, how we can

make the life of our customers of partners of our providers

better, I think you would have had a definite impact and this

certification will become a fuel to go in that journey of making

things magical.

Eveline Oehrlich: Very inspirational. I love listening

to you, but we have to finish our podcasts. And I have one

closing question for you. If you have time for doing something

fun. What do you do?

Suresh GP: Well, I love travelling across the globe and

meeting people with different ethnicity, culture and

diversified experience. I’ve had the opportunity to do it in 26

different countries, and I’m still learning. I love reading

books playing badminton, and I’m a fitness freak, so I do

swimming regularly. Finally, I love posting content around

productivity hacks and entrepreneurship because I think

all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So I wanted to kind

of bring in some of those aspects of people can think

there is there is aspects beyond work and have fun around the

journey.

Eveline Oehrlich: You have been exceptional. This has been

fantastic shores. Thank you so, so much for your time. Really

appreciate it.

Suresh GP: My pleasure even to have me on this podcast and hope

the viewers get inspired to do this some of the certificate

courses and enhance them in their career. And thank you so

much for doing the great work for inspiring a lot of humans of

DevOps, to take action and move forward in their career.

Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. We have been talking to shores GP

Managing Director at taupes solutions again, thank you for

joining me today shortish on humans of DevOps podcast. Humans

of DevOps podcast is produced by peoplecert and DevOps Institute.

Our audio production team includes Daniel Newman shots and

Ingrid sides. I am humans of DevOps podcast executive

producer, evolutionarily, if you would like to join us on a

podcast, just contact me or reach out to humans of DevOps

podcast. asked at DevOps institute.com. I think that’s

the longest email, soil. I’m Evelyn early. Talk to you soon.

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