Darren Keall: AI app assurance for resilience and innovation

• Up to 80% of IT budgets can be tied up in maintaining the applications (known as application assurance) that businesses run on.

• AI application assurance lowers cost of support by up to 30%.

• This strengthens resilience and makes room for innovation.

Application assurance is about managing and optimising the software your business relies on every day, whether that’s on a platform such as Salesforce, a cloud native, integrated solution comprising of many components or a bespoke application built in‑house. We ensure that those systems run smoothly, stay secure and adapt as needed. It’s proactive, keeping applications in peak condition so they can support future demands. 

There are obvious costs like operational spend just to keep outdated systems alive. Then there are hidden costs; the inability to adapt quickly, risks of outages and difficulty meeting new compliance standards.  Operational costs can consume up to 80% of tech budgets, leaving little over for innovation. 

"AI assurance isn’t just fixing problems faster; it gives organisations the breathing space to improve and evolve."

AI transforms how quickly and accurately we operate. It accelerates knowledge gathering, risk assessment and incident resolution, allowing teams to work smarter, not just harder. 

Impact of AI‑enabled application assurance:

• Proactive anomaly detection.
• Automated triage and resolution.
• 30% lower support cost.
• Datacom owns AI operational costs.

Yes. Instead of only reacting to incidents, AI helps us spot risks earlier and implement changes faster. These gains mean freed‑up budgets, reduced risk and the operational stability to support innovation. 

For clients with regulatory and compliance requirements, legislative changes can require rapid system updates. AI app assurance enables them to meet tight deadlines with a 30–40% improvement in response times. It’s the difference between scrambling to meet obligations and confidently delivering without disruption. 

"When applications run reliably, innovation becomes a practical, low‑risk part of everyday business."

Monitoring collects data, but observability turns it into insight.  With AI, we can go further, detecting patterns and predicting incidents before they disrupt operations. Reducing avoidable outages keeps systems available to support day‑to‑day needs and strategic initiatives

Go with a human‑guided, AI‑enabled model. Experienced engineers remain in charge, with AI acting as their fast, smart assistant. This builds trust and allows gradual expansion of automation in line with governance and risk needs. 

Boards want higher efficiency without cutting capability. AI assurance delivers exactly that — better quality for less cost. Lower TCO, faster change, fewer outages and measurable ROI make this a lever worth pulling now.

Strategic gains for boards:

• Lower operational costs without sinking service quality.
• Faster capability delivery to meet market and compliance demands.
• Predictive operations to minimise risk and downtime.
• A proven ROI model with clear metrics from independent analysis.

Use partners with proven AI assurance frameworks. Building in‑house is long and expensive. Outsourcing to a mature solution lets you start benefiting immediately and focus your own resources where AI enables innovation.

In Datacom’s case, we have already done this in our own business, and we are now referencing our learnings to help our clients. Minimise risk by looking for pilot use cases to trial and measure, progressively extending to enterprise applications.  Utilising proven AI assurance frameworks can rapidly accelerate progress and avoid the large costs of building from scratch in-house.  We know, from our investment, that it’s easy to deploy AI for simple use cases, but it’s complex and expensive to scale to build a solution that is safe and can make a real difference.