Recent analyst reports show that 80% of IT budget is now spent on maintaining IT. Additionally, 80% of downtime is reported to be as a result of human error; either someone did something wrong or did not do what they were meant to.
Additionally, organisations do not really know what their highly paid IT support people do since they are not good at keeping a record of their activities. Something breaks, it gets fixed, problem solved. "We're very busy" translates into managers saying, "they are, but I am not too sure what is keeping them so busy".
Consequently, many companies are looking at ways to automate many of the IT processes within their operation resulting in faster resolution, 24/7 consistent performance, an audit trail of activities and a central repository for process management. This area of interest is being referred to as run-book automation (RBA).
Run-book automation, according to Wikipedia, is "the ability to define, build, orchestrate, manage and report on workflows that support system and network operational processes. A run book process can cross all management disciplines and interact with all types of infrastructure elements, such as applications, databases and hardware.
"According to Gartner, the growth of RBA has coincided with the need for IT operations executives to deliver and prove higher IT operations efficiencies including reducing mean time to repair (MTTR), increasing mean time between failures (MTBF) and automating the provisioning of IT resources. In addition, it is necessary to have the mechanisms to implement best practices (for example, implement and manage IT operations processes in line with IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), increase IT personnel effectiveness (for example, automate repetitive tasks associated with IT operations process) and have the tools to fully report on how the processes are executed in line with established policies and service levels."
RBA or IT process automation has the following benefits for an organisation:
* IT efficiency - by controlling certain costs, simplifying the complexity of IT operations, and improving productivity and service delivery
* Business enablement - by aligning IT and business goals, optimising service levels and reporting on them, and enabling new services
* Compliance - by enforcing best practices, standardising and increasing visibility into IT activities, and reporting, documenting and auditing operations processes
So how does this then get done? It is possible to develop the integration and automation either by using resources to code the scripts or use a tool that is designed to accomplish that end.
The pitfalls of using highly paid resources to write the scripts that enable the cross-platform integration and automation required to accomplish this end are: the time taken to develop with expensive resources, very few of these people document what is being done, languages supported and what happens when the resource leaves.
Opalis Software is the leading provider of RBA software that orchestrates, integrates, and automates IT processes such as incident, problem, configuration, and change management across the IT infrastructure - all from a single console. This is achieved through Opalis' extensive out-of-the-box process catalogues, deep integration with application, management and operating environments, and its script/code-free approach. Opalis solutions incorporate the people, process, and technologies involved in operational procedures, so IT organisations can reduce costs, improve service delivery, and ensure compliance through repeatable, reliable and standardised best practices.
BIAMIC ICT Solutions (Pty) Ltd is the appointed reseller for Opalis Software throughout Africa. Any queries to be made to opalis@biamic.co.za.
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