FEATURE
A
nsible is a game changing open-
source automation technology
for the management of IT
environments at scale. Designed to be
simple to adopt, use and understand,
Ansible has become the world’s most
popular open-source IT automation
technology, with more than 2,400
unique contributors, nearly 30,000
commits to the upstream Ansible
open-source project and a user base
that spans industries and the globe.
Red Hat acquired Ansible in 2015, with
the aim of helping users drive down
the cost and complexity of deploying
and managing both cloud-native and
traditional applications across hybrid
cloud environments. With Ansible,
organisations can make the automated
enterprise a reality.
Automation is transforming industries
and delivering exciting innovations for
businesses and consumers. For example,
automobiles have moved beyond
discrete automation in areas such as
navigation systems, cruise control and
lane sensors to more comprehensive,
holistic automation that can replace
the driver entirely via self-driving cars.
Retailers are moving to automated
distribution centres, changing
the supply chain to help create a
competitive edge. The consumer
electronics industry is moving beyond
siloed smart appliances, lighting, alarm
systems and thermostats to whole
home automation solutions.
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Meanwhile, across industries, there is
an ever-increasing pressure to deliver
innovation faster and IT architectures
are changing to adopt the latest
technologies that can keep them
competitive, while still maintaining
necessary legacy systems – often
resulting in complex, disparate
systems that can span private cloud,
public cloud and on-premise. The
complexities of modern, multi-cloud
environments can be staggering and
without automation, managing the
environments that drive innovation
can be impossible. However, to date,
automation has generally been used
discretely within enterprises, with a
different tool for each management
domain, narrow in scope and tactically
used by siloed teams, dramatically
limiting its potential and value.
Joe Fitzgerald, Vice President,
Management, Red Hat, says: “By many
metrics, Ansible has been a huge
disruptor in automation and has the
potential to take enterprise IT by storm
by becoming a de facto standard for
automation. There are enterprises
that have standardised on Ansible
technology for their automation and
we believe it is the start of a significant
movement. By bringing native Ansible
support to our management offerings
and seeking to use it across more of our
portfolio, Red Hat is uniquely helping
to make the automated enterprise a
reality with the ability to automate
complex, cross-domain systems through
a single technology.”
In an article titled ‘Automation:
The Next Frontier for IT’, Gartner
commented on the mandate
for organisations to implement
organisation-wide automation, saying:
“Managing growth and taking cost out
at the same time is a requirement for
digital business, but it’s not easy for
IT infrastructure and operations (I&O)
leaders to achieve. Automation is the
answer. The benefits are compelling –
automation improves accountability,
efficiency and predictability, while
reducing cost, variability and risk.
So why aren’t more organisations
further down the automation path?
Until now automation has been
deterministic, where discrete manual
steps or processes were automated
to lower costs and improve quality
of service. While this approach has
provided incremental benefits, it
doesn’t handle massive scale or
dramatically reduce costs.”
Red Hat’s vision for
enterprise-wide automation
Red Hat believes automation is an
essential and strategic component
of modernisation and digital
transformation and that modern,
dynamic environments need a new
type of management solution that
can improve speed, scale and stability
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