May 2019 Summaries

In the digital era, state and local government and education (SLED) agencies are increasingly leveraging technologies like 5G, cloud migration, and shared services to improve efficiency and service delivery, despite facing challenges such as budget constraints, talent shortages, and heightened cybersecurity risks. The integration of technology in educational services and Smart City initiatives highlights the transformative potential of real-time data and faster connectivity, although the majority of SLED IT spending remains allocated to maintaining aging systems. With cybersecurity attacks on the rise, these agencies struggle with adequate breach detection and risk mitigation, often hindered by limited resources and compliance obligations. Emphasizing IT modernization, automation, and cybersecurity, SLED agencies aim to maximize resource efficiency, improve service quality, and mitigate risks, with companies like PagerDuty providing support through real-time action and automation solutions.

Karl Pinto, an Account Manager at PagerDuty's Commercial Sales Team in Toronto, transitioned from studying Computer Science at Waterloo to a career in tech sales, driven by his passion for the business application of technology. After gaining valuable experience at Dell, where he learned to communicate solutions effectively to customers, and spending a decade at Salesforce witnessing its growth, Karl joined PagerDuty to help a smaller company expand. He values PagerDuty's positive culture and collaborative environment, which contrasts with the notion of a cutthroat corporate atmosphere. Emphasizing the importance of work-life balance, Karl acknowledges the necessity of taking breaks to avoid burnout, a lesson learned from his own experience of underutilized vacation days. His love for travel has taken him to various countries, and he looks forward to future adventures, such as attending the Olympics in Tokyo, driven by his upbringing in the culturally diverse city of Mississauga.

HybridOps is an emerging operating model that reflects the diverse IT landscape in modern enterprises, where no single model can address all business needs due to the coexistence of cloud technologies, legacy systems, and microservices. Coined by PagerDuty, HybridOps integrates multiple teams and functions such as NOCs, DevOps, security, and customer support, focusing on real-time, intelligent orchestration to enhance business agility. It leverages data, analytics, and automation to dismantle silos and foster seamless collaboration across diverse operating models. High-performing HybridOps organizations feature seamless team communication, automation-driven incident response, and data platforms that promote information sharing and continuous improvement. Platforms like PagerDuty facilitate this model by providing real-time operational insights and bi-directional integrations, enabling teams to efficiently respond to incidents across different interfaces like Slack and ServiceNow. Embracing HybridOps allows enterprises to align more closely with business objectives and enhance customer satisfaction by empowering teams with autonomy while maintaining accountability for business-impacting outcomes.

PagerDuty is showcasing its latest ServiceNow integration for HybridOps teams at the Knowledge19 event in Las Vegas, highlighting its role as a ServiceNow Gold Technology Partner. The integration is designed to enhance real-time operations for diverse operations teams such as NOCs, central IT, DevOps, and DevSecOps by facilitating collaboration and communication through shared data and continuous improvement practices. This integration allows teams to leverage PagerDuty's incident response capabilities directly within the ServiceNow interface, promoting efficient incident management and minimizing digital disruptions without leaving familiar workflows. It features bi-directional syncing of incident data, automated escalation paths, and real-time status tracking, enabling teams to operate seamlessly and enhance digital transformation efforts. The integration supports over 300 tools and includes customizable options for user onboarding and role management, offering robust solutions for managing IT incidents, security responses, and other critical operations.

Adam Johnson, CEO and co-founder of IOpipe, discusses the challenges and best practices of monitoring serverless applications, which have grown in adoption by 75% since 2017. Unlike traditional architectures, serverless systems emphasize business logic over infrastructure, as the latter is managed by cloud providers, enabling developers to focus on delivering customer value quickly and cost-effectively. Serverless monitoring requires different tools to handle the unique challenges of tracing millions of invocations and diagnosing performance issues like cold starts, particularly for languages such as Java. Despite serverless advantages such as reduced costs and faster deployment, developers often struggle with observability. To address this, Johnson recommends setting up alerts for application failures and unexpected invocation drops, and using structured logs to simplify debugging. IOpipe also offers integration with PagerDuty for real-time alerts, enhancing visibility and reliability for organizations such as Rackspace and Comic Relief.