Author: Rose de Fremery
Date published: September 17, 2024
Enterprise IT leaders face a complex environment, where expectations around digital transformation are high but resources may not necessarily match–according to SoftwareOne’s 2023 CIO Pulse, 92% of respondents say digital innovation will drive new revenues in the year ahead, but 83% of CIOs believe they will have to achieve more with less.
In trying to balance competing priorities, IT management is turning to automation. According to a study commissioned by Kyndryl, nearly two-thirds (63%) of companies plan to increase their investment in IT automation, even while their overall IT budgets are being maintained or reduced.
IT automation is the practice of writing software code to automate repetitive IT tasks that would otherwise be carried out by a human IT professional. As with other forms of business automation, it can streamline processes within the organization by potentially eliminating human errors and unfavorable outcomes such as reduced productivity, IT burnout, service disruptions, security incidents or an unsatisfactory digital employee experience. As the overall enterprise IT estate rapidly expands, IT teams are often expected to support an ever broader range of technologies as well as hybrid and remote workforces, all while protecting critical business and customer data from increasing cyber threats. Automation could significantly improve an IT organization's ability to support the enterprise's current and future business requirements.
Automating IT management can take many forms, including IT service management, which improves the daily technical support processes that employees depend on to be productive and fulfilled in their jobs. It can also include network automation, which centers on streamlining core network administration tasks such as planning, resource provisioning, network mapping and network testing. Additionally, IT automation can refer to autonomous IT systems that take contextual information such as user behavior into account before granting access to network resources. These types of automation can serve as enablers for reaching strategic business goals, such as building network agility, strengthening network security and improving the overall digital employee experience.
According to Fortra's IT Automation Survey, 71% of organizations are using multiple tools for IT automation. There is good reason for that. Automating IT management allows enterprises to regain or build valuable time and/or human resource capacity within their IT organizations. This can enable them to focus their efforts on delivering better service, keeping pace with technology change and maximizing ROI, just to name a few benefits. Automation can also mitigate the difficulties associated with the current IT skills shortage. Automating IT management allows enterprise IT teams to accomplish more tasks more accurately and with fewer employees, helping to alleviate the strain that IT teams often face due to short staffing.
Network automation offers particular benefits to enterprises that are undertaking crucial network transformations or planning to initiate them in the near future. For example, because network automation reduces the number of resources needed to administer the network environment, it can deliver an attractive boost to the bottom line. It can also help with improving network performance, reliability and security. For example, by using network automation to coordinate telemetry from a variety of sources, enterprise IT teams can create sophisticated network analyses that provide deeper insight into potential emerging performance issues or security concerns. IT teams can take advantage of greater efficiency to accelerate timelines for digital transformation initiatives to advance enterprise goals.
Automation isn't simply a technology or a set of process improvements. It can also be considered an organizational skill. For example, an enterprise IT team just starting to implement advanced IT automation may want to address smaller and simpler automation initiatives before proceeding to take on more sophisticated endeavors. Before automating any aspect of IT management, leadership should determine if the process can or should be automated and whether there is sufficient ROI in doing so. Sometimes it might be more effective to simply eliminate unnecessary process steps rather than automating them. IT leaders should also make sure they are using tools that were specifically designed with automation in mind. By following these steps, the IT team will be able to prove the value of automation, earn stakeholder buy-in and generate momentum for future improvements. It can then re-invest the capacity it has gained or recouped into increasingly ambitious automation, becoming steadily more proficient over time. One such example involves deploying network as a service (NaaS) to facilitate a network transformation. Automation is a key component of NaaS, helping enterprises achieve the scalability and flexibility required for optimal network performance and future innovation.
Not all enterprise IT teams are in a position to implement NaaS given their large portfolio, potential lack of networking skills and limited staffing resources. In these cases, they may find it beneficial to engage the expertise of a trusted managed services partner that has deep experience with network automation. With the right partnership in place, the business can stay on track with all of its network transformation projects, as well as its overall strategic goals.
There are so many ways in which automation can increase efficiency and create the agility necessary to compete and thrive in the digital age. Now, enterprise leaders are tackling some of their highest-priority challenges using IT management automation. They are not only building valuable internal capacity that will help their IT teams provide more efficient support to the enterprise and its employees on a daily basis, but they are also achieving the crucial agility that is required to carry out the network transformations they need to complete. By tapping the power of automation to streamline IT management, for example, by using the automation capabilities found in NaaS to enable powerful network transformations, these enterprises can build the resilience and flexibility needed to weather unexpected crises and maximize the opportunities that arise in the coming years.
Learn more about other network best practices for global enterprises.
The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.