Maybe the Issue is Not AIOps but Automation

Nearly 77 percent  of technology professionals see room for improvement in their data center network automation strategies and 45 percent  of organizations expect their data center network automation investments to earn a return on investment  within two years, researchers at EMA say.

Fully 90 percent indicated that AIOps-driven network automation would have value.

More than 98 percent of respondents expected to use a network automation tool. Unexpectedly, the most popular tool type were solutions designed specifically for automating cloud infrastructure, rather than data center networks. 

DevOps automation tools, integrated automation capabilities from hardware vendors, and network overlay software were all secondarily popular options for automation

Plenty of organizations included monitoring tools, network orchestration and automation (NOA) tools (sometimes known as intent-based networking), and network change and configuration management tools in their overall data center network automation strategy.

source: EMA, Juniper Networks

Why "Horseless Carriage" Tells Us Much about the Future of Metaverse

With the caveat that intentions are not outcomes, early investment in metaverse capabilities is unevenly distributed. Industrial processes are getting early investment, often in the form of digital twin platforms that allow managers to monitor complex systems in real time, as well as test “what if” scenarios. 

And we might also keep in mind that early visions of what is possible, and what will be popular and useful, often diverge from ultimate reality. Humans have a hard time envisioning futures that are based on radically-different assumptions than the present. 

The fact that early automobiles were known as "horseless carriages" illustrates the point: we imagine the future in terms of our past. Early refrigerators were known as "ice boxes," as that is the technology electrical refrigerators replaced.

The other area of early investment are content and applications, both for roughly analogous reasons: metaverse offers a potentially richer and more-realistic virtual experience.

source: McKinsey 

Many observers will point out that the metaverse is not here yet, but is going to be built over a period of time (one decade or more). The evolution will happen from current use cases and capabilities. 

The eventual metaverse will be built from today’s sensor use cases, automated control systems, applied artificial intelligence, faster processors and cheaper storage, plus more capable access and local and private networks, payment systems, specialized devices and software. 

Realtors will use digital twin technology to allow homebuyers to experience in three dimensional sense what a potential home looks like, without being there, physically inside the property.

Industrial process managers will be able to analyze data from their operating processes and machines in real time, and also use virtual replicas of those processes and machines to conduct “what if” games of the sort financial analysts began to do when the first personal computer spreadsheets were created. 

source: PwC 

Videogame players were early beneficiaries of computer-generated graphics, and will likely be among the first to see applied versions of immersive and persistent gaming. Traffic engineers might someday be able to use real-time traffic data to relieve some congestion at peak rush hours, or reroute traffic around temporary obstructions. 

Sometimes the Value of Extended Reality is the Device, not the "Reality"

So I did this, recently. The value actually had nothing to do with extended reality--artificial or virtual--but in the use of the goggles instead of a dedicated stationary appliance. In other words, the appliance moves to the human, not the human to the machine. 

This sort of thing happens quite often with new technology. A device or app is developed to solve one set of problems or provide one set of values. But then it gets used in ways not in line with that creator vision, in ways that provide value, but were not specifically imagined. 

Yes, the goggles were "better" in terms of user experience. But it was the goggles, not the software or app experience, that accounted for the increased value.