IT Automation: What is best for your organisation?

Last month, we discussed Aruba's network automation SDKs and APIs. The streamlined and automated process of configuring, running, installing, analysing, and maintaining virtual and physical network equipment is referred to as network automation. IT automation encompasses far more than network automation. Dedicated IT software can automate organisational operations in addition to the installation, provisioning, operation, monitoring, maintenance, and administration of storage and computing resources.

Automation skills are becoming increasingly important to the overall functioning of an organisation and its ability to deliver real-time services, decrease human error, and accomplish more with its existing resources. Automation is employed in many forms across departments and teams, and automated processes are frequently used to move data across departments and companies.

Automation has become a critical component in organisations, necessitating the creation of completely new positions and competencies. For example, an automation architect is a senior-level role reporting to the chief information officer. They are responsible for aligning automation processes, tools, and strategies with business objectives. Automation architects collaborate with department heads, stakeholders, and IT teams to ensure best practices are followed, compliance is standardised, and automated systems and processes are optimised.

Automation opportunities and benefits

IT automation is critical for increasing efficiency and optimising performance, no matter the size of the organisation, to accelerate digital transformation. IT automation uses software to implement policies and procedures that decrease or replace manual involvement with systems.

Infrastructure automation allows IT teams to develop and automate infrastructure setup and lifecycle processes, and rapidly deploy and manage infrastructure using software-defined templates and APIs. This allows administrative and operational tasks to be streamlined. IT operations improve productivity and strategic engagement by automating tedious activities. This allows them to shift from completing tasks that could be perceived as a business hindrance to strategic facilitators.

AIOps is another recent IT notion that enhances automation. AIOps is artificial intelligence for infrastructure that uses machine learning to manage, modernise, and optimise the IT environment. By 2023, Gartner predicts that roughly 40% of infrastructure and operations teams will be employing AI-powered solutions, resulting in increased IT efficiency, agility, and scalability. AIOps solutions make use of data collected from the many deployed systems to provide unrivalled real-time assistance. Deeper insights and proactive management are provided by AI-enabled automation, which makes systems smarter, more dependable, and efficient, allowing companies to drive business innovation.

IT automation enables faster data centre operations in the cloud with improved security. Some of the advantages of IT automation include:

• Reduced operational costs - Automation lowers labour costs as well as other performance and operational expenses.
• Accuracy - Humans are more likely to make inadvertent mistakes. This can be eliminated with the use of powerful automation solutions.
• Efficiency – Shifting IT staff from routine and time-consuming tasks to focusing on strategic goals that will contribute to the organisation's long-term success. IT automation also helps in decreasing employee churn.
• Improved ROI - Automation solutions may help businesses increase throughput, reduce cycle or processing times, and cut operational costs.
• Less reliance on outsourcing - Automated procedures boost in-house delivery, resulting in less reliance on the outsourcing model.
• Consistency in quality and delivery - Automation provides consistent and high-quality delivery in accordance with company metrics.

HPE’s IT automation solutions

Hewlett Packard Enterprise provides sophisticated and adaptive IT automation to expedite installations and simplify lifecycle management of IT solutions. This results in predictable performance. Integrated infrastructure automation software and the industry's most advanced AIOps can ease lifecycle management across compute, storage, and networking. HPE delivers comprehensive tools to automate and alter the administration of IT environments.

HPE OneView

IT becomes faster, more efficient and more streamlined with HPE OneView. The underlying architecture of HPE OneView is secure, intuitive, and open to a wide range of third-party solutions. HPE OneView is a single platform built for infrastructure management. An integrated platform increases team productivity across servers, storage, and networking.

While HPE OneView decreases the number of tools required by system administrators, most organisations will continue to use their own suite of solutions dependent on business needs. HPE OneView is compatible with a broad range of best-in-class software partner tools. Applications can use HPE OneView to build a baseline of infrastructure data and capture changes in state or metrics.

Hybrid cloud deployments increase productivity by mixing on-premise resources with public cloud services. Embracing hybrid allows organisations to remain flexible while still having a wide range of data and app deployment options. HPE Greenlake enables on-premise data centres to take advantage of cloud benefits through pre-configured infrastructure choices. HPE provides, installs, operates, and maintains the infrastructure as part of the GreenLake service. We, as your IT partner, can work with you in identifying your business needs. We will help your business remove the complications associated with hybrid cloud management and the provisioning of virtual machines and containers directly from HPE GreenLake Central.

HPE GreenLake includes all of the management services that are needed to monitor, operate, administer, and optimise HPE systems, as well as approved third-party or multivendor environments. GreenLake Management Services provide a wide range of deep domain experience, automation and full-stack competency across core, cloud, and edge, which helps to expedite digital transformation. Remote monitoring, capacity management, task automation, and analytics are all accessible in a managed, as-a-service form.

HPE Pointnext services

HPE Pointnext provides expertise in critical areas such as advisory, professional, consumption-based IT, and operational services. HPE Pointnext offers strong, scalable IT solutions to businesses of all sizes.

From transformation consultation to technical support, HPE Pointnext is committed to assisting in the unification and removal of complexity across conventional data centres, cloud, and edge environments to provide a smooth hybrid IT experience. As your IT partner, we work with the professionals at HPE to tailor a service offering specifically for your business needs.

The service provides knowledge to assist in the optimisation of infrastructure solutions for existing workloads and in the development of hybrid IT and edge environments for a new generation of apps and data that will accelerate organisations into the future. HPE Pointnext deploys and manages IT solutions, allowing businesses to focus their own IT resources where they will provide the greatest commercial value with the help of our guidance.

Conclusion

IT teams use automation solutions to address the difficulties that arise when infrastructure and operations become more complex. Automation software reduces the need for human intervention in time-consuming and difficult tasks by automating organised workflows and procedures.

The majority of today's IT automation is centred on infrastructure deployment and administration. This is changing, and automation is becoming more important in preventative and proactive operations that result in self-healing and autonomous IT infrastructure.

HPE offers several solutions and solution components that elevate IT automation to the next level. HPE OneView automation simplifies operational tasks, boosts staff productivity while cutting costs, and accelerates the introduction of new technologies. HPE Pointnext Services provide access to knowledge at every stage of your IT journey, reducing time-to-production and ensuring your IT is stable and reliable. HPE GreenLake provides several solution components that aid in the automation and management of deployed infrastructure.

HPE automation solutions have been designed to meet the demands of companies of all sizes. We, as your HPE partner, can help you tailor HPE automation offerings to best suit your company and use cases.