Simplifying IT Process Automation

IT Management | Blog Post | Mike Vizard, Friday, March 5, 2010
systems management
When it comes to getting more out of your existing IT investments, there’s a lot to be said for IT process automation. The only problem is that the amount of time and expense it takes to automate a lot of routine IT tasks can be daunting. So rather than reinvent the process of managing IT, many IT organizations continue to muddle along.

One company that thinks IT process automation should be simple is Advanced Systems Concepts. Jim Manias, vice president of sales and marketing for Advanced Systems Concepts, says any tool designed to automate job scheduling processes should be able to be installed in a matter of minutes and allow IT administrators to start scheduling their first jobs in about 10 minutes.

Manias says the core problem with the job schedulers that come with most products is that they are rudimentary and can’t be extended to processes that involve multiple products. In response to this requirement, the makers of job scheduling tools have been transforming their products into suites of workload automation tools. But Manias says rival offerings to ActiveBatch have lost sight of the primary goal by designing over-complex suites of tools that are difficult to deploy and expensive to obtain.

Given all the focus on trying to reduce IT costs as the amount of data and processes that need to be managed continue to spiral out of control, IT process automation is definitely at the top of the 2010 IT agenda. The problem is that nobody seems prepared to transform the way they manage IT over night, so perhaps a few baby steps in the right direction might be just the thing.

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Here's to those baby steps & ITPA usage maturity...
Fri, 2010-03-05 15:33 — David Shephard (not verified)
Hi Mike, I couldn't agree more with your observation that IT Process Automation is at the top of many 2010 IT agendas, we are seeing that daily. Here at NetIQ we also fully support Jim's observations around the time to install and configure processes. At TechEd Europe 2009 we demonstrates how an IT Process Automation workflow, that will start a spooler, can be created in 407 seconds - no edits, no cuts - using NetIQ Aegis. How? - By simplifying the process modeling using a visual designer: http://www.youtube.com/wa.... Many organizations see many different advantages to IT Process Automation, and much is said about the benefits of automating routine, mundane and manual tasks from overburdened operations personnel. Let us take ITIL. The best-designed processes can sit on shelves while the organization refuses to change. IT Process Automation should bridge the gap between process design and implementation by leveraging tools already in use and automating the repetitive and bureaucratic portions of ITIL. My colleague gives some real-world examples in his presentation 'Making ITIL Practical: The Impact of IT Process Automation': http://tinyurl.com/y96amkp. So 'here's to' those baby steps and IT Process Automation usage maturity...

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