Good reasons for automating IT operations
The challenge of having your IT infrastructures under control is becoming an increasingly complex one. Just updating a server can involve several hundred individual steps, all of which have to be undertaken manually. Yet there are modern software tools which will automate a variety of IT management processes, even across heterogeneous system landscapes.
IT managers are relying more and more on automated processes within their IT departments: automation solutions carry out processes considerably more efficiently and quickly, freeing IT staff from recurring tasks so that they can spend more time on the strategic development of the IT infrastructure.
The following simple example illustrates just how complex the operation of an application can be. The IT service management solution, BMC Remedy, requires at least one database, one application and one web server, with several levels of the application usually running concurrently. Although maintenance work regularly requires the import of software updates, downtimes at individual desktops is obviously to be avoided. Users may therefore have to be temporarily diverted to other servers, since the systems have to be shut down for the actual update itself. Then the patch is imported and the computers are rebooted. With administrators carrying out many of these steps manually, an update can take 15 to 30 minutes per server, depending on the application and the scale of the system. If each server and application is treated separately, it will take several hours before the patch is fully installed. However, many of these time-consuming manual steps can in fact be carried out automatically and simultaneously using special software solutions.
Defining responsibilities
A further challenge arising from decentralised IT systems lies in establishing who is responsible for what. In other words, the responsibility for operation systems and database, application and web servers tends to be attributed to different groups of people. Silo structures of this type can hamper the smooth running of the system. For example, the “managed server” service encompasses the provision of hardware, operating system and database. Although the customer is receiving a service in the form of database operation, however, this department does not check whether the database is actually working optimally with the application as a whole. The silo mentality of many IT departments and service providers can turn out to be a hindrance to innovation.
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