Normal Is A Rapidly Moving Target
Observing The Invisible
Back in 2021 I wrote a blog post entitled Observing the Invisible which talked about the importance of surfacing the behaviour of applications and systems through the real-time capture of operational and business metrics to feed into monitoring and alerting tools and how that data could be reported and visualised to provide insights into system performance and anomalies and to determine what "normal" looks like at any given time.
These days this is commonly referred to as "Observability" and it has become a key focus for many organisations as they look to improve the reliability and performance of their applications and systems as well as maximise business outcomes.
Observability and AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular Machine Learning (ML), is now playing an increasingly important role in the field of Observability, helping to automate the analysis of large volumes of data in real time and identify patterns of normality and anomalies that might otherwise be difficult for humans to detect.
AI-powered machine learning can help to identify potential issues before they become critical and can also provide insights into the root causes of problems when they do occur. Failures have even become predictable.
Normal Has Moved On
But AI hasn't stopped at observability and machine learning. Generative AI (Gen AI) has revolutionised creativity and Agentic AI is about to have an even greater impact on how we work.
Customers have always had great expectations and the IT industry has always been focused on meeting those expectations, so when we pause for a moment to survey the IT landscape of our modern day solutions, we can see that things have changed considerably and are continuing to do so.
The Evolution Of Normal
Cloud computing has made rapid infrastructure provisioning more accessible and flexible than ever before.
Elastic compute and auto-scaling ensure we can scale up and down according to demand. Serverless architecture allows us to focus on functionality without worrying about infrastructure.
Containerisation and orchestration tools allow horizontal scaling and distribution of workloads across clusters enabling fault tolerance and high availability.
Distributed, parallel databases prevent data loss and maximise data processing across massive datasets.
Voice recognition and voice generation, chatbots, natural language processing, sentiment analysis etc. are causing us to re-think the user interface and how we interact with applications and systems.
Sustainability is another focus for organisations as they look to reduce their environmental impact as legislation forces them to embrace Green IT practices.
Today's applications are unrecognisable from those of the past!
What were once individual technologies have diverged and become highly specialised and more composable than ever before. One size no longer fits all. We now have even more choices than ever before when it comes to building applications and systems and who would dare to venture an opinion on which are the right tools and technologies to use.
Normal Is A Rapidly Moving Target
The pace of change in technology is yet again accelerating and the IT landscape is evolving even further. What was considered normal a few years ago may no longer even be relevant today.
The concept of "normal" is constantly shifting as new technologies and approaches are emerging, the key driver of change being AI.
Moving Out Of Our Comfort Zone
Our mastery of tools, techniques and technologies once gave us competitive advantage and a comfort zone in which to operate but that is no longer the case as even the development lifecycle is now being redefined by AI and automation at an alarming rate.
Most of us like to introduce change incrementally and evolve our practices over time but the present reality is that we need to be able to adapt quickly, not only to keep up but to avoid being left behind.
Agility Ability
Agility and adaptability are now more important than ever before.
We need to be able to pivot and change direction quickly – even when the direction is not clear and the path is not well defined. This requires freedom and trust to experiment and learn from failure. It also requires clear communication of strategy and vision to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals so as to avoid unnecessary U-turns.
Relying on familiar technology providers will not be sufficient if those vendors are not innovating at the same pace as the market. We need to be able to evaluate and adopt new technologies quickly and effectively to stay competitive. Some vendors are clearly demonstrating superior products and strategy compared to their rivals who are struggling to catch up.
For some organisations, those prone to heavyweight bureaucracy and a reluctance to embrace continuous learning, the magnitude of change in such short timescales will simply not be possible.
Conclusion
Only those organisations that are able to embrace change and adapt quickly will be able to thrive in this rapidly evolving IT landscape. Those unable to pivot and change direction quickly will be left behind as will those who do not offer their employees sufficient freedom, trust and support to experiment with new tools, technologies and techniques.
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Tim Simpson
26th February, 2026
#AI-Architecture | #LifeAtCapgemini