The Top 5 IT Automation Trends Shaping 2019
In March, we identified the top IT operations trends to follow in 2019. Let’s now take a closer look at one of the trends from that list that’s grown particularly quickly this year – so quickly that 2019 may, in fact, become known as the year we began to take it for granted: IT automation.
IT automation examples are everywhere. In fact, IT automation has become so prevalent that it is now part of the everyday landscape in IT operations. From its humble beginnings as a collection of simple scripts designed to eliminate repetitive tasks, IT automation has evolved into advanced tech that provides sophisticated capabilities that are transforming the way IT operations teams do their jobs.
Today, IT automation is providing for increasingly intelligent infrastructures that have self-healing abilities. It streamlines operations, improves the customer experience and reduces costs by being efficient and effective.
5 IT Automation Trends That Shaped 2019
IT Automation Trend #1: Automated Decision Making
Developments in artificial intelligence technologies, such as machine learning, coupled with the availability of massive computing power to manage big data, are providing increasingly deep insights into the state of the managed estate.
These insights lead to automated decision-making that goes far beyond the traditional models driven by rules-based engines. This IT automation trend results in much faster identification of issues in the network and increased resolution times.
Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) tools are increasingly being put to work. The automated decision-making capabilities of these tools provides real-time tracking of service performance, which leads to the ability to ramp up resources as needed. The end result is a reduction and minimizing of service degradation and outages.
IT Automation Trend #2: Test Automation
As new technologies and services are deployed, test automation is increasingly being regarded as an IT automation market trend that can be used to ensure that these efforts are delivering value. IT automation facilitates the entire DevOps process, from commit and build to test and deployment, by ensuring that the entire supply chain executes in a proven, trusted and codified manner.
Ultimately, test automation reduces the sheer number of human errors and improves efficiency and throughput. Continuous and structured automated testing ensures that as technologies are deployed, they work as expected and meet the needs of the business and end-users.
IT Automation Trend #3: Low-Code Process Automation Tools
Robotic process automation (RPA) has been an emerging IT automation trend over the past few years. It has introduced the ability to automate a variety of processes with minimal – or zero – human intervention. While RPA tools have benefits for IT operations management, a new breed of low-code process automation tools are now emerging that complement RPAs by taking the complexity out of building automations. They essentially provide a Lego building block approach to generating automation code.
Low-code process automation brings about huge efficiencies in how automations are built and propagated. Automations can now be constructed in minutes rather than days. In addition, they make it possible for non-technical personnel to build automations that otherwise would have to be constructed by skilled IT resources.
IT Automation Trend #4: Keeping Pace with IT Operations
Automation remains essential to IT operations and digital transformation. The ability to combine multiple automation workflows across multiple systems is an example of how IT automation makes it possible to conduct ever-more-complex operations.
Provisioning processes continue to rely on automation to conduct the efficient management of network, computing and storage resources. Automation will also remain a key part of configuration management where the provisioned resources are set up to run applications and provide the desired services. Security management continues to provide fertile opportunities to automate processes in order to better maintain compliance standards.
Software-defined networks and network function virtualization systems are bringing sophisticated capabilities to bear in real-world environments. IT automation remains at the heart of how these activities are conducted via orchestration systems.
IT Automation Trend #5: Human Interaction
As automation continues to proliferate across the business and technology domains, the anxiety that has been associated with this trend in the past has eased a bit. Today, there is widespread acceptance that automation does not result in the elimination of jobs and personnel.
Automations do take on tasks that previously were labor-intensive, but they also free up these resources to work on higher-value activities. Emerging IT automation market trends do not take away from key decisions that still require human oversight.
While advanced IT automation software may have the capability to make a prediction, most times human interaction is needed in order to make this prediction prescriptive. For the foreseeable future, operations staff will continue to play an active role in the management of automations and all aspects of the service delivery infrastructure.
Is your IT operations service provider keeping an eye on these IT automation trends?