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The best kind of problem is, of course, one which never occurs. However, in the IT world we know that it’s not a matter of if challenges occur but when. That’s where IT resiliency planning comes in.

Let’s start with the basics: IT resiliency refers to a network or system’s ability to adapt, and protect an organization’s data and services from disruptions and disasters. And while any organization hopes to avoid these unpredicted issues entirely, implementing an effective IT resiliency plan allows organizations to withstand and recover from them quickly. In essence, resiliency means accepting — and anticipating — that there are going to be problems, and figuring out how to:

• Prevent issues from occurring
• Minimize impact when things do go wrong
• Improve overall recovery time

To remain competitive, IT organizations must optimize their digital operations from code to customer. In fact, top performers we work with on IT resiliency have benefitted from:

• 83% less time fixing incidents
• 2x as many issues caught before business impact
• 96% faster security threat detection

To unlock these advantages, you must take a holistic approach to IT resiliency designed to streamline IT operations, bolster security, enable workforce resiliency, and more.

However, after holding several resiliency events over the last year — with over 100 executives and over 1,000 technical experts engaged in the conversation — Broadcom has discovered three high-priority themes for our readers within the resiliency field:

1. Customer experience
2. Managing large amounts of data
3. Artificial intelligence (AI)

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Creating a Flawless Customer Experience

Creating an unmatched customer experience while delivering resilient IT support should be top of mind for today’s organizations. This means clearly identifying customer expectations for applications, and aligning on the “why” and the “what” in IT. In other words, what does a flawless customer experience look like for your enterprise, and what must work together in IT to execute that goal? The overlap between desired business outcomes and IT is of the utmost importance.

Data and Data Management

Both data and data management strategies are key to creating powerful, resilient customer experiences. This includes monitoring the following across your organization:

• Quality of data
• Amount of data
• Where the data resides
• Who can access the data
• Timeliness of data access
• Ability to detect data corruption
• Data deletion and maintenance
• The need to be on top of evolving audit, compliance, and government regulations
• Methods of leveraging data with other processes, including AI

Unlocking the Potential of AI

The third topic that has emerged at the forefront of resiliency conversations is AI — specifically, its business potential, and the concerns some have about it. What we do know is that organizations cannot ignore or discount AI — wherever they may lie on the spectrum surrounding it.

AI has the potential to increase productivity and efficiency, lead to improved and better-informed decision-making, streamline development of new products and services, and deliver more personalized customer experiences. However, as organizations explore leveraging AI within a resiliency strategy, they must pay attention to both algorithmic bias, and potential misuse of personal or corporate data.

The best way to navigate this is to ensure corporate guidelines are in place, and that all teams are aware of them. Start small, be clear about the use case you are seeking to solve and be transparent — because pairing AI with human intelligence and supervision remains critical to efficiently leveraging (and maximizing) the benefits of this technology.

5 Steps to Building a More Resilient IT Enterprise

Resiliency is multifaceted and, as such, must incorporate many elements — including the three we just reviewed. However, you can also follow these five steps to creating a resilient enterprise that can deliver a flawless customer experience:

1. Do an assessment to ensure your environment is current with best practices, and follow up with regular check-ups.
2. Prioritize observability of (and integration between) the business, applications, and underlying IT.
3. Host incident management meetings, combined with a no-blame culture (encouraging open participation, and establishing a clear understanding of the difference between blame and accountability).
4. Implement change management strategies to reinvent processes; streamline, automate, and address risks; and anticipate issues before they occur.
5. Experiment with AI once you have identified target use cases and ensured your enterprise has established guidelines and your team members understand them.

Learn More About Resiliency

You don’t have to make all of these changes on your own. In fact, choosing an IT partner to help you plan your resiliency strategy can help you build a plan fit for all of your business needs. Here at Broadcom, we take this partnership very seriously and are ready to help you every step of the way. Get started on your resiliency journey today.

Keelia Estrada Moeller is a content marketing specialist for Broadcom Mainframe Software.