"Every new iteration of management software seems to require more extensive training than the last, and the increased complexity causes more difficult-to-diagnose problems--problems that wouldn't be there if we didn't have the management software," says one respondent. "When we have problems with management software, their support blames the changes we make, not that their software wasn't designed to anticipate that server change or application install."
Note to vendors: Where are the simpler, more easily managed products that don't take a dedicated, senior-level IT engineer to understand?
We hate to sling doom, but implementation, integration, and training problems could well worsen before they improve as we incorporate cloud services into a hybrid on-premises/online architecture.
So where's the best place to break into automation? That depends on your architecture, but let the five most-cited reasons by respondents for undertaking these projects be your guide.
Tied for first are increased productivity and improved performance. These translate to reducing the time to deploy new applications and provision servers, or increasing service availability (uptime) and reliability (minimizing unplanned downtime). Cost reductions are at No. 3, followed by improved security and meeting SLAs.
The areas that IT would most like to automate share a common theme: a high amount of manual effort. Think change and configuration management; application or system provisioning; routine maintenance, such as OS updates or patches; and identity or access management. Makes sense, yet these tasks are some of the least automated among our respondents. Atop the list of tasks most often cited as "fully automated": backups, monitoring cooling levels, and power management. When it comes to server and network provisioning or systems maintenance, fewer than 10% have gone to full autopilot. Yet that's precisely the goal of IT process orchestration software--not merely to simultaneously push out a service pack to 100 servers, but to link multiple automated tasks into an end-to-end workflow that can, for example, instantiate a new virtualized instance of a SharePoint application server at the push of a button.
One area that will give you bang for your automation buck is physical and virtual server automation. Fewer than half of our respondents automate here. But there are plentiful products, including IBM's CloudBurst, Egenera's PAN Manager, and VMware's vSphere. Better yet, these are increasingly being bundled and preintegrated with hardware management suites like those from EMC, HP, and IBM to deliver systems that can easily provision virtual servers, storage, network links, and application images.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
