AI engine On this point, Chellapa adds that one of the things ManageEngine customers gain access to when they buy one of its solution is the company’s own Deep Learning engine named ZIA, standing for Zoho Intelligent Assistant, which it has been developing for about five years and which is one of the services built upon its framework, alongside alerting and instant messaging. As such, it can be leveraged by all existing ManageEngine solutions, including PAM and ITSM. In the case of the latter, ZIA works as a chatbot, enabling users to ask questions and get information about tickets without having to open the solution. ZIA also sits at the core of ManageEngine’s business intelligence solution, Analytics Plus. “You can ask a question like ‘which of the systems are most frequently accessed by my users’ and it will tell you, or ‘which system is accessed the least’. Once you know which ones are underutilised, you can cut costs by reducing device specifications or combining devices. There are a lot of areas where you can apply AI-based solutions. I saw some numbers from Gartner, I believe, showing that 48% of CIOs have already invested in or are looking to invest in AI in the next 12 months. AI is going to be the trend for the foreseeable future.” Chellapa says that the technology behind ZIA is the same as that used by large language models (LLMs), the difference being the size of the data set, with any model trained on 1 billion parameters qualifying as an LLM. He adds that ChatGPT and other LLMs are very useful for tasks that involve crunching huge volumes of data, including information that businesses would previously have archived and kept just for compliance or auditing purposes, such as event log data, where they can bring big productivity gains, reduce manpower requirements and deliver powerful insights. “Enterprises can also leverage LLMs within their infrastructure to help with pain points frequently experienced by customers, like false positives. Customers get false positives all day long but there is always a chance you will miss that one really important alert that's going to bring down your infrastructure. LLMs are really helpful in those areas because they can consume huge volumes of data and will help you clean up the false positives and focus precisely on what you need to attend to.” In the future, ManageEngine is likely to make more use of external LLMs with its solutions, but for the moment, says Challapa, there are still areas of concern. “The verdict is not out on how these LLMs are trained. Is it moral? Is it ethical? There are also a lot of data security and privacy concerns around the usage of LLMs. Ten years ago, social media was relatively new and organisations didn’t know what to do about it. Today, pretty much all enterprises in UK have a social media policy that says what you can or cannot do with regard to social media. I expect something like that to happen with LLMs.” will be able to integrate it with those solutions. Most of our products can contextually integrate with third party solutions, because we provide an API, out-of-the-box integration or an SDK to plug in. The bottom line is these solutions are supposed to work together and we’re going to help the customer achieve that either by selling our own solution or if they already use a different vendor by enabling contextual integrations.” In this context, Chellapa adds that some products also have out of the box data migration capabilities. For example, its PAM product lets users import secrets that are already stored in LastPass or KeePass out of the box. Technical support This, he points out, is just one of the ways in which ManageEngine helps customers deploy its products. “We offer free technical support and free proof of concept before someone even procures a licence, and all of our products are available on a free 30-day trial with full functionality. Even during that period, we offer data migration services. So long as an existing vendor has not tried to lock you in by not offering basic capabilities like an export option or an API to extract data, we can help.” In addition, ManageEngine holds numerous seminars and workshops on its products, plus training and deployment services to help with on-boarding, including free, one-time pre-deployment assistance for small and medium-sized businesses. Together, these help customers implement solutions more quickly. “With ManageEngine products we never see any implementation go beyond six months, even in the largest enterprise,” claims Chellapa. “Solutions like PAM are deployed in less than a month and even large solutions like Endpoint Central that you deploy to manage your entire infrastructure never go beyond six months. If you look at Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester you will find ManageEngine scores really high for being user friendly and easy to deploy. I've seen customers who procure a large solution from another vendor and never complete their deployment; it works, but they’re always halfway through. They don't get everything they pay for.” 2024 forecast – Shankar Haridas highlights his priorities for 2024 q What was the most interesting business development in 2023? The widespread adoption of cloud-native technologies and the rise of hybrid work models. The evolving threat landscape increased pressure for enterprises to improve their cybersecurity maturity and increase their cybersecurity budgets. w What’s new for your business in 2024? We're excited to introduce innovative AI capabilities that will improve efficiency, automate tasks and provide valuable insights to ManageEngine tools. We'll expand our cloud offerings as businesses continue to adopt cloud-based technologies for scalability and flexibility. e How do you plan to drive further growth in 2024? We plan to: strengthen customer relationships with health check programs and customer success initiatives; focus on vertical-specific activities; target public sector opportunities through some of the major frameworks; form strategic partnerships with channel networks; and increase regional expansion. (Turn to page 39 to see more 2024 forecasts) INSIGHT technologyreseller.co.uk 37 Shankar Haridas
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