The dawning of the IT automation era

The dawning of the IT automation era
By Alan Smith, senior vice president in the UK and Ireland for UC4

Published: March 23 2010 13:06 | Last updated: March 23 2010 13:06

Over the next five years, IT automation will overtake offshoring as the big IT efficiency trend.

For many companies, offshoring has reduced IT budgets by lowering the cost of labour and facilities but increasing complexity in IT infrastructure and more demanding service levels mean returns are diminishing.

According to the BDO Seidman 2009 Technology Outlook Survey, an annual survey of US chief financial officers conducted in January of 2009, only 42 per cent of the 100 surveyed said they had operations outside the country, compared to 79 per cent last year.

Despite this, companies will still seek cost savings in IT operations – and the answer will be IT automation.

Automation technology will drive further optimisation and lower the cost of IT operations, with several factors contributing to its coming of age – including cost reduction pressures and the need to align all business processes in a complex IT environment.

Cost Reduction

The first and most obvious reasons for IT automation are the opposing demands for cost reduction and improved service levels and capability.

The recession has forced IT professionals to squeeze costs out of their budgets, leaving them with a bare bones operating plan. At the same time, IT organisations are asked to deliver more with less and to deliver business innovation with cost avoidance strategies.

These pressures place severe time constraints on existing IT staff who are burdened by manual tasks, leaving little time to engage in strategic delivery of services and capability.

In a survey that UC4 conducted in April 2009, we found that one day of each working week was dedicated solely to IT administrative tasks – an indication of how much valuable staff time is wasted on well-defined, programmatic, repeatable tasks that could be handled by workload automation technology readily available today.

According to a 2007 report by Enterprise Management Associates, without data centre automation, the average company would have required eight additional staff, at a cost of £344,280. The survey also found that 77 per cent of respondents reported that automation improved data centre profitability.

IT staff and managers already recognise the benefit of IT automation software but lack the long-term perspective to carry it out. In a recent survey of Oracle Applications User Group members, UC4 found that the majority of respondents see IT process automation as a cost-saving measure, but budget restrictions in the tightening economy remain the biggest obstacle to wider adoption.

More than 60 per cent of respondents indicated they simply did not have the budget for automated solutions or tools.

Complex IT environments

The most compelling reason for the rise in automation is that IT environments are becoming more complex. Enterprise systems are becoming increasingly diverse, with companies employing a range of financial, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and sales force automation solutions from a range of vendors.

On top of that, IT environments are changing, with consolidation toward virtualised platforms and utilisation of external cloud-based technologies to deliver a business service.

Not only are infrastructures becoming more complex, but also the IT processes, as they typically span more than one application.

In the Oracle user group survey, we also found that 75 per cent of respondents reported difficulties monitoring and managing processes that span more than one application, with 57 per cent reporting that these struggles resulted in delays for the business, either in time-to-market or ability to integrate applications and processes.

Traditional job scheduling automation technology can’t address this level of complexity. The days of rigid, highly structured scheduling are gone. We are operating in a world where thousands of streaming, interdependent events must be understood in the context of how they impact the ability of IT infrastructure to meet business requirements.

What is required today in automation technology is real-time intelligence and just-in-time execution. This enables real-time monitoring and analysis of IT processes and allows companies to automate and connect between hybrid environments for a seamless integration, bringing visibility across processes and improved management and control over the success of transactions.

Without this real-time integration, existing staff are blind to the business process impact across the greater organisation.

The call to action is clear – as IT departments continue to do more with less and IT environments become more complex, the need to automate will be paramount. We are already seeing many vendors start to market automation software and company adoption is increasing. The IT automation era is upon us.
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