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Can IT Be Automated? An Introductory Guide to Making the Right Automation Decisions
IT automation can open the path to improved operations, customer experiences, time to market and more.
But not every process or task is a perfect match for automation. Learn about key considerations you should address as you embark on your IT automation journey.
Automation terms to know
When seeking IT automation opportunities, you’ll come across many terms and concepts everyone in your organization should understand.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): The use of algorithms to complete tasks normally associated with human abilities, like learning and problem solving
- Automation: A system that completes a single process with little to no human intervention by using a mix of mechanical- and computing-based tools
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD): A software development approach where updates are finished and made available as soon as ready
- Hyperautomation: The practice of rapidly automating business and IT processes across an organization’s teams and departments
- IT Infrastructure: A system — compute, storage, network, software — used to deliver IT services and capabilities to an organization
- IT automation: Applying a mix of technologies, including AI, machine learning and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), to automate manual IT-related tasks
- Machine Learning (ML): The process of training software to act upon data without explicit instructions
- Orchestration: An automation state where multiple IT systems are working together to complete tasks
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA): An AI technology that can complete software development and IT management tasks by following a record of how a human performs the task
The importance of IT automation
Automation plays a critical role in modernizing IT — helping advance your department’s maturity and strategic importance to the business. When implemented effectively, automation helps you:
- Redirect resources: Automating manual tasks allows your teams to focus on delivering new value to the business instead of maintaining operations.
- Increase agility: Time-consuming tasks can now be done faster, helping expand what’s possible within a given timeline.
- Simplify management: Existing processes can be streamlined or eliminated entirely as complex workloads are offloaded and accelerated.
- Optimize costs: New efficiencies give you an opportunity to reduce and redirect costs to help maximize your existing budget.
Develop an evaluation strategy to guide your IT automation strategy.
A misguided initiative can cause new issues that need addressing. Before starting your project, it’s important to fully understand what you’re automating and get buy-in from every teammate the initiative could impact.
6 key considerations when finding IT automation opportunities:
- Start small. Many initiatives seek the idealized end state right away, but that doesn’t always work with IT automation. Start with automating smaller tasks so you can show value to internal stakeholders and find roadblocks early on — ensuring everything runs smoothly.
- Find the repeatable. There’s no sense in automating a one-off project. Repeatable tasks like provisioning, onboarding and data entry are ideal candidates for automation.
- Identify errors. Mistakes happen, but issues frequently occur in a workstream, then automation could ensure the task is done with 100% accuracy. Start by reviewing manual processes that are spread across different teammates. Issues can stem from teams using different methodologies to complete the same task.
- Work with what you know. Legacy IT processes and application updates can result in scenarios where your organization doesn’t fully understand how something is working. You’ll want to do a thorough audit of any process candidate to determine if automation is the right way to achieve your desired outcome.
- Optimize costs. Sometimes your most skilled teammates are working on the most mundane tasks. Automation can maximize the value of your knowledge workers by eliminating monotonous tasks, freeing those teammates to work on high-value projects that expand your capabilities.
- Lose the silos. Ensuring every effort is de-siloed and working in orchestration is a key component of automation. As you start to automate a process, take time to increase visibility into everything that’s getting automated.
With your evaluation guidelines in hand, start exploring the following IT systems for automation:
- Infrastructure deployments across on-premises and cloud platforms
- Disaster recovery management and execution
- Resource provisioning
- Security Incident and Event Monitoring
- Application development
- Network management
Ready to automate IT?
Leveraging our deep technical expertise and advanced partnerships will help you implement IT automation and deliver new business outcomes.
