compute environment: everything from
provisioning servers to endless patching,
deploying custom apps to resolving outages.
It’s in the network: everything from ongoing
network testing to troubleshooting MPLS
issues and orchestrating software upgrades.
It’s in security operations, where teams must
separate real incidents from false alarms,
block unauthorised access attempts, audit
privileged access and much more. And
it’s in the service desk, where staff may
be troubleshooting slow PCs one minute,
adding cloud storage another and applying
hotfixes to business apps the next.
What complexity means
Without automation, IT leaders will find
that their staff end up spending too much
of their valuable time on simple, repetitive
tasks. When IT was first introduced into
organisations it eliminated back-office jobs
focused around manual repetitive processes
and transformed businesses with computing
power. The irony is that today, IT itself is riven
with repetition and manual process. There’s
still too much hesitation around trimming the
fat even in the face of cost reduction in some
environments and an inability to hire enough
qualified staff in others.
Repetition is also the enemy of innovation.
If you spend all your time on maintenance,
where’s the value add? This is particularly
www.intelligentcio.com
“
PEOPLE SHOULD
BE THERE TO
MAKE THE
COMPLEX,
NUANCED
DECISIONS THAT
MATTER IN IT,
LEAVING THE
MACHINES TO
AUTOMATE THE
THOUSANDS
OF STEPS IN
BETWEEN.
important in the context of skills shortages.
The European Commission believes there
could be as many as 756,000 unfilled
jobs in the European IT sector by 2020,
stalling important economic and social
development. Automation frees up the staff
you need to have retrained or organically
moved into higher-value roles. People should
be there to make the complex, nuanced
decisions that matter in IT, leaving the
machines to automate the thousands of
steps in between.
Doing so will help to improve agility, both
in the IT department and the business as a
whole. This is crucial to support the ever-
changing demands of external customers.
But it’s also important in staving off the
shadow IT challenge within the organisation.
If the IT function is not operating in a way
that meets internal customer expectations,
users will find workarounds that could
expose the business to security breaches
and compliance problems. This is especially
true of the service desk where slow response
times are in stark contrast to the need for
speed in DevOps.
With the negative impact of inevitable
complexity on organisations, the only answer
is to automate everywhere.
The power of automation
When done well, automation can save
significant time, money and man hours,
providing value in the tens of millions while
simultaneously mitigating security risk
and freeing up IT teams to become more
strategic and innovative. ITOps teams can
benefit from automated infrastructure
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