Transforming Traditional Managed Services In An AI-Driven World

By Ismail Hassim – Sales Executive: Private and Public Sector Managed Services at iOCO

In the world of managed services, AI is enabling us to reinvent managed services models, moving them from SLA-based to experience level agreements (XLA) – based. With AI, we can add more value. Instead of simply putting out fires, we can partner with our customers to transform their businesses.

What does AI not do? It is not a silver bullet and it’s important to separate fact from fiction and in some instances, pure fallacy. The reality is that AI needs the right governance, guardrails, risk management, change controls and ultimately human touch, to deliver optimal value.

While there may be a perception that AI could ultimately replace traditional managed services, we don’t believe that’s the case. Managed services will evolve but will remain a critical foundation for organisations in an AI-driven world.

Future-forward managed services

AI is empowering traditional managed services providers to evolve and offer more tangible value to clients. We are moving from reactive support to predictive and even autonomous support, in which issues are identified and resolved before they impact the business.

We can deliver proactive self-healing systems that run in the background, predicting common problems and pre-emptively avoiding them.

For example, AI can take on patch management to ensure that patches are never overdue. It can address operating system compatibility issues to keep the OS environment more stable and predictable. In the application world, many application functions can now be automated. AI supports capacity planning and availability management, faster and more accurately, with predictive analytics that eliminate the need for spreadsheets.

Managed services can now offer both back-end integration and front office white glove service by blending the trusted reliability of traditional services with the intelligence and autonomy of AI. With AI, managed services can elevate our offerings across operations including aligning IT strategy with business objectives through to the implementation of plans. Further, we can focus on the ongoing optimisation of operations where our specialist resources and experts enable the transformation of architecture and ops.

By taking on core functions, AI allows organisations to redeploy their skilled human resources into higher value activities within the business.

AI-enabled, end-to-end managed services value

iOCO is harnessing AI strategically to evolve our approach and our service model. We are  moving beyond traditional SLAs to offer outcomes-based services and XLAs. In an XLA model, we are an IT partner rather than simply a service provider. We offer AI-enabled, end-to-end managed services that focus on continuous optimisation and enhanced user experience. We work to improve both the client’s IT environment and their business as a whole.

Our unique AI-driven approach to end-to-end service offerings covers the full spectrum of IT operations management, plus continuous optimisation, and transformation services via regular architecture reviews – this is all included in our base price.

Furthermore, in the event of what is termed a Priority 1 (P1) incident that results in system downtime, we immediately activate a dedicated war room staffed by our most experienced product specialists, senior architects, and engineers. This cross-functional response team works in real time to restore services swiftly and minimise business disruption. With cybersecurity services seamlessly embedded into our integrated service model, we maintain end-to-end observability and control, ensuring rapid recovery and future-proofed operations.

But we are also aware of potential concerns around security service providers being too closely aligned with managed services providers and thus being ‘judge and jury’ of their own work. Therefore, our security operations centre (SOC) has the autonomy to act as an advisory to the business – independent of systems integrators.

We don’t view AI and managed services as competing forces – we see them as complementary to each-other. Together, they help build resilience, improve operations and  future-proof customers’ businesses.

Contact iOCO to learn how we can map a measured path for your business that leads to greater autonomy – with humans firmly in the loop – through a 30-day XLA baseline  and AI opportunity assessment that aims to quantify quick wins for your organisation.