Ask the Expert: Insights from Paula Thrasher, Senior Director of Infrastructure and Platform, PagerDuty

In this blog post, Paul Thrasher, Senior Director of Infrastructure and Platform at PagerDuty, provides her takes on the challenges and opportunities facing tech leaders today. From managing complexity to driving operational resilience, Thrasher shares expert insights on how executives can get ahead of disruptions.

As digital complexity continues to rise, what do you see as the biggest challenge for CIOs and CTOs in maintaining operational efficiency?

The biggest challenge for CIOs and CTOs is managing the increasing complexity of IT systems, which now touch every aspect of business operations. While technology has advanced, offering new opportunities, it has also added layers of complexity that make manual management nearly impossible. The pressure to control costs, coupled with the larger business impact of outages, makes balancing efficiency and resilience even more difficult.

What role does operational resilience play in staying competitive, and how should tech leaders prioritize it?

If you don't have availability, you don't have a user experience. Given how integral technology is to business operations, you need to evaluate every part of the organization and ask, "What would it cost if this went down?" How much revenue is lost during each outage? In some cases, there may not be a direct financial impact, but in most, the cost of an outage directly influences how much you should invest in building resilient systems. Outages are also trust erosion events for your brand, so there are other intangibles to consider besides revenue.

How can tech executives break down silos between engineering and operations teams to improve collaboration and incident management?

Breaking down silos starts with fostering better collaboration through shared understanding and shared automation. Many organizations still rely on outdated operating models, but bringing engineering and operations teams together can reduce noise and improve the maintainability of the system. By using automation to eliminate repetitive tasks, teams can focus on solving higher value problems. By working the same tool, they can ensure smoother collaboration during incidents.

With automation becoming increasingly important, how can leaders ensure they implement it effectively without introducing new risks?

Automation should be approached incrementally, starting with predictable, repeatable tasks before moving into more complex judgment-based decisions. Leaders can safely implement automation by focusing on tasks that are manual, well defined, and well defined, such as a runbook, and then gradually introducing AI-assisted processes with human oversight. Keeping experts-in-the-loop to monitor automation ensures that it operates as intended while minimizing risks.

Looking ahead, what trends in incident management and digital operations should CIOs and CTOs be paying attention to?

AI will continue to be a key trend, enabling organizations to automate low-value tasks and free up resources for innovation. Effective use of AI can drive business value and provide a competitive edge. Additionally, the integration of digital operations and security is crucial. Breaking down silos between security and operations is essential for maintaining a resilient system, as these areas must work together to ensure long-term success.

The intersection of digital operations and security is a trend that can't be ignored. I don't view security as a separate bucket. Having strong integration between digital systems and security is essential and will continue to be a driving force in the industry. We often talk about breaking down silos between engineering and operations, but we don't focus enough on the silos between security and operations. It's impossible to maintain a resilient system without bringing the security and operations universes together in a meaningful way.

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