Drive Efficiency in IT Organisations with Automation
Published on : Tuesday 30-11--0001
The IT Operations world is no longer what it used to be. With the advent of a host of new technologies and frameworks, such as DevSecOps, PaaS, FaaS, containers, hyper-converged and software defined infrastructure, and with the recent spur in the adoption of these offerings, the infrastructure and application support world has drastically transformed. In this article, I will talk about the importance of automation in IT and the different levels of IT automation that organisations tend to operate at to address the demands of this dynamic IT world of today.
The business demands of today’s world are extremely challenging. The customers have become more knowledgeable and are the ones who are driving the transformation required for businesses. Today’s customer expects the best service, as he now has more alternatives than he has ever had. The organisations which can address these demands successfully, are the ones who are reaping benefits of today’s digital world.
Some traits that are found in the solutions/services delivered by these successful organisations are:
- Agility in the processes, which enables delivering frequent and incremental services
- Flexibility to course correct quickly based on learnings from the field
- User Experience(UX)-centric design to ensure effective and simple delivery of services
- Embedded security
- A robust support function, which can rapidly resolve any customer issues, and
- Less to no impact to services, when the demand goes high.
With such high expectations, automation is emerging as a key business need, which almost every organisation must invariably adopt. With manpower being an expensive option and the fact that it also comes with its own limitations, such as the inability to scale up with accuracy in crunch situations, automation goes beyond merely complimenting an organisation’s workforce.
IT space is one such area, which has had a large impact by the adoption of automation. Whether it is a small company or a large one, IT plays a key role in the success of its digital business. Consistency, reliability, availability and scalability are the key areas where automation can contribute heavily.
Enabling Site Reliability Engineering has become the goal of every forward-looking IT organisation. SRE preaches that the role of a traditional system/network/application administrator needs to evolve into an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) who can bring a software developer’s way of thinking and working style to the IT world. This helps identify opportunities to automate and uses coding techniques to deliver these automations of support and operations tasks one script or one solution at a time.
With efficient automation in place, an organisation will be able to build the capability to repeatedly execute a job with minimum errors and of the same quality. Organisations across the world are at different stages of adopting automation in their IT. IT Automation is applicable at different levels in an organisation and it requires a robust strategy to be effective.
Stages of Automation
In the IT world, there are different ways to categorise automation, but the one which I find simple and effective, is to classify based on the evolution of automation in an organisation. This can be as follows:
1. Task Level Automation
At Task Level Automation, both the scope and the scale are small. As the scope is small, automation opportunity is usually well defined and targets specific steps in a process. It is mostly low impact deliverable in nature; however, it is a good place to get started, as it enables a culture of automation and is a mandatory first step towards adopting automation.
2. Process Level Automation
Naturally evolved from task level automation, automation at Process level is where the scope shifts from a specific task to a more significant process. The ROI (return on investment) tends to be quite high, and when implemented effectively, the value it generates is of high impact and resonates well within an organisation.
3. Release Automation
This may or may not follow a process level automation phase, as it is driven by an organisation’s appetite to move closer towards DevOps. When adopted, it tends to make an immediate impact towards the UX for the employees as well as customers, as it can shorten the time-to-market for a service. The quality of software that is churned out using this practice is usually high as there are standards that are always met when Release Automation is implemented effectively.
4. Intelligent Automation
This is an evolved state of automation mainly driven by Machine Learning, Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. This can be considered as the gold standard, when it comes to evolution of automation and its effectiveness for an organisation. A solution which falls in this category is usually a high-impact solution, and often has a large RoI associated with it. Predictive solutions which not only depend on the patterns of the past but are able to correlate data from different sources to deliver effective automation forms the foundation of intelligent automation.
Automation is a key partner for an organisation, especially when the organisation intends to either scale its operations or desires more value for its investments. Building a dedicated team to drive the automation movement in the organisation is critical to the success of automation. This team should initially focus on identifying and implementing the required automation, and aim to be the Centre of Excellence, which can influence and drive automation in other teams.
Automation team within an IT organisation should not be treated as a luxury that is indulged into when there is unspent budget. On the contrary, Automation is a necessity, especially when there is an intention to optimise the spend and standards of IT.
(Disclaimer: This article reflects my current and personal views, and should not be necessarily attributed to my current or former employers, or their respective clients or customers.)
Captions
Pix1: Stages of Automation.
Pix2: Shamayel Mohammed Farooqui has authored a book, ‘Enterprise DevOps Framework – Transforming IT Operations’, touching upon many such critical areas, where an organisation needs to focus and invest to drive real transformation, and become a truly modern and innovative organisation.
