ITRS The Big Brother effect
Hit reality TV show, Big Brother, is about to make its highly anticipated return and is once again ready to captivate audiences with its blend of drama and competition. The show’s success relies heavily on the voyeuristic pleasure viewers derive from watching contestants’ every move. Guy Warren, CEO of ITRS, highlights how the concept behind Big Brother and its watchful eye can prove beneficial to businesses that heavily rely on IT infrastructure to fuel their operations.
gambling and gaming, there is a wealth of knowledge and insights that firms can glean from its voyeuristic nature and the incessant, round-the-clock surveillance that it epitomises.
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Much like how viewers are captivated by the constant surveillance of the show’s contestants, and their ability to see how tensions between one another could result in some of the most ‘entertaining’ moments in the programme’s history, monitoring allows us to gain valuable insights into the inner workings of a firm’s digital systems, and how small issues can lead to crisis moments. The popularity of the show is driven by the fact you can observe people’s every move, and this aspect is what is relevant in the world of IT monitoring systems. Like how viewers observe contestants’ actions, monitoring and observability allows IT teams to gain real-time insights into the internal workings of a software system.
Observability provides the capability to monitor, diagnose, and optimise the performance of a software system effectively, which in the world of gambling and gaming, where ensuring that services are always on, is crucial when seeking to meet customer expectations.
THE ‘ALWAYS ON’ MENTALITY In today’s digital landscape, businesses across industries rely heavily on technology and IT systems to drive their operations. Among these, gaming firms face unique challenges due to it being a highly dynamic and competitive industry. Therefore, to thrive in this landscape, firms must adopt an ‘always on’ mentality.
Having an always on mentality means ensuring that systems are consistently up and running, and never the victim of ‘downtime’ - a period whereby a firm’s systems or services are unavailable or non-operational, meaning customers can’t access systems. Ensuring always on services goes beyond reactive approaches, however. To ensure round the clock services firms need to
hilst Big Brother may seem like a distant concept that has little connection to the world of
Failure to prioritise observability leaves companies vulnerable to unexpected systems failures that can swiftly erode their reputation, customer trust, and bottom line. Additionally, the difference between being a hero and falling into obscurity in the gambling industry can hinge on the ability to maintain uninterrupted operations which relies heavily on robust IT systems and continuous observability.
Guy Warren
emphasise proactive vigilance, ensure real-time insights into system performance, potential risks, and customer experience. For gambling firms especially, downtime can prove fatal, it’s ‘make or break’, with hundreds of competitors waiting in the wings to easily pick up a disgruntled customer base should they be unable to access services. And the more common you are a victim of such issues, the less customers will be willing to tolerate and be driven to play elsewhere, which can rapidly lead to a loss of market share.
THE POWER OF OBSERVABILITY Whilst adopting an always on approach to monitoring is crucial, to truly mitigate risks, it’s essential that operators always have full observability of their infrastructure. ‘Observability’ instead of ‘monitoring’, is the key word here. It’s about unknown-unknowns rather than known-unknowns. Monitoring tells you if the systems are working, while observability answers the question as to why it is not working. Achieving real-time observability of all relevant structured and unstructured data in real-time is vital – by utilising technology to ensure this, firms can dramatically reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) – the time it takes to resolve faults should they occur.
THE BIG BROTHER OF GAMBLING Fortunately, there are advanced monitoring and observability solutions available that cater to the specific needs of the gambling industry. By leveraging these tools, gambling firms can gain real-time insights into the health, performance, and security of their IT systems. Meaning they can proactively identify issues before they become a problem, manage risks, and ensure smooth operations, even in the face of high demand and dynamic changes which the gambling industry is known for. By enabling gambling firms to monitor crucial components of their IT infrastructure, including networks, applications, databases, and servers, conveniently through a unified dashboard, firms can ease the process. Through consolidating this into a single pane of glass view, IT teams can get a comprehensive understanding of their systems, whereby they can pinpoint potential bottlenecks, identify anomalies, and make well-informed decisions to optimise performance and elevate the overall customer experience.
With observability, gambling firms can proactively identify and address issues, optimise performance, comply with regulatory requirements, gain valuable business insights and embrace the voyeuristic nature reminiscent of Big Brother. In a competitive industry where every second counts, prioritising observability is not just a strategic advantage, but a necessity for long-term success. In doing so, gambling firms can confidently navigate the dynamic landscape, ensure transparency, trust and securing their positions as leaders in the industry, just like the captivating nature of Big Brother’s constant surveillance.
GIO JULY 2023 13
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