Welcome to the world of Automation
We
live in a world of advancement and the technology keeps advancing to make our
lives easier. Most of us use technology to automate only our personal task. Why
don’t we change one’s tune to break the ice of using the technology to automate
the repetitive tasks we are doing?
Automation normally refers to something
done without human help or intervention in general industry. Information
Technology (IT) has introduced huge degree of automation in all spheres of
business. The IT operations like design, develop, operate, maintain have been
dominated by organic resources. However now there is an increased focus on
using automation to bring efficiency in IT itself. Among IT admins, automation can be a scary topic for
various reasons. In reality, these fears are often overblown. If we choose to
adopt automation, it will certainly change our data centre and its processes.
IT
Automation helps to create
business solutions like code generators, release/deploy code, generate metrics,
managing IT assets, tools etc. Typically IT operations and monitoring areas
have been the major focus areas for implementing automation. However with
advent of new IT architecture/technologies like cloud, SaaS, PaaS etc there are
lot many other areas where automation can be used to improve productivity and
service quality. These can be grouped as under:
Workflow Automation: Any automation that helps in moving
work items like alert-to-ticket automation, auto-escalations, approval
processing etc.
Workload Automation: This refers to any scheduled job
automation like triggering backup jobs, reporting, cleanup activities, moving
files, etc.
IT Process Automation: This approach covers key
aspects of IT including event management, incident management, SLA management,
capacity planning, availability, reporting, dashboards, and service management.
Few examples are:
- Data gathering & reporting
- Patch management
- Self-serve options
- System builds, release and
deployment
Automation
in IT is used to drive consistency and standardization, reduce operating costs
and improve the service levels.
Here
are some of the most common forms of automated technology that uses IT
functions to increase the control of the end user:
HOME AUTOMATION
These
days every Tom, Dick and Harry can control the appliances such as lights, TV
and even fridge by means of our smartphone. This aspect of modern life is part of what
scientists call “the Internet of Things” – a system that enables among others
for every device or appliance to have its IP. The long and short of it is that device
has an IP, then we can control it remotely and program its settings without
even getting up from the couch.
CLOUD COMPUTING
The bottom line of storing data and information on our local hard drive is obsolete. With cloud computing, we can manage, and process high quantities of resources on a server hosted on the Internet. All our projects, holiday photos, and our licensed programs can safely be uploaded to a size-able storage area that has no physical characteristic.
One of the main benefits of using cloud computing is its automation feature. This technology enables us to access our files from anywhere on the planet as long as we have a stable Internet connection. Consider a situation where you travel for a business conference, but you forget the presentation on your home-based PC, you can still access it if you have previously stored it on a cloud server. Automated cloud computing technology makes it easier to process data and share information over vast distances.
INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION
Due to unpredictable technology development, the industries are trying to reduce man power where they trying to increase automation function in various sectors. This leaps and bounds is a result of the great advent of industrial automation and information technology. These days, a company that assembles cars only employs 20% of the number of engineers that it used to have over two decades ago. Through the power of remote control and fast data processing, several robotic devices can work flawlessly to complete their job in 1/5 of the time needed by a team of human workers to achieve the same result.
DATA ANALYTICS
Another area in which organizations are using IT automation is with data analytics and business intelligence. Several recent studies have revealed that the largest share of new IT spending is expected to go toward data analytics. But as has also been widely reported, there is a shortage of skilled data scientists and data analysts to work on data initiatives and make sense of all the data piling up. This is fuelling increased interest in IT automation tied to data management. Automation helps organizations improve data insight with intelligent analytics and reporting designed to easily identify, monitor, and manage workflows and systems for faster, more reliable workload performance – therefore, allowing them to adapt to agile environments.
IT Automation Pros and Cons
IT automation's benefits include improved reporting and business intelligence; faster data centre and cloud operations; reduce time to issue resolution/improve troubleshooting; ease of use in workflow monitoring; reduced errors and variation from one implementation of a task to the next; and enhanced security and governance. Having automation in your office allows you to focus more time on your clients and revenue generating tasks. However, an IT automation strategy must account for and eliminate errors because an automated error will proliferate much more quickly than a manual error.
The Future of IT Automation
Automation is the latest trending technology in many fields especially in industries like manufacturing, control systems, mining, etc. The current era fully rolled out with many new automation technologies. In such case more automation companies and industries were newly introduced within market which obviously shows the market growth of Automation. While analyzing the revenue growth of Automation functions, it highly developed from $150 billion USD to $250 billion USD since from 2010-2014. And the annual growth percentage increases from 20-55 percentages, which clearly shows that automation technology contains huge scope in coming years. Even the most full-featured tools depend on an IT professional or team to develop and maintain discrete automation elements, such as scripts, templates, policies and workflows. IT automation will progress to act with greater intelligence and autonomy. IT automation platforms are likely to rely heavily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.
Reference:
- http://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/news/450428076/Puppet-automation-reaches-beyond-configuration-management
- http://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/news/450420508/Form-an-IT-automation-tool-strategy-the-right-way-for-the-right-reasons
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