Introduction to IT Automation – What is it and why is it worth it?
Today we want to tell you Mark's story about the IT automation process at his company.
Marek, head of IT at a large company in “X” industry, was sitting in his office reviewing reports. Another month, another complaint from the business – too long implementation time for changes, frustrating procedures, endless approvals. Many years agok before automation in IT world, Marek’s company implemented ITIL-based processes, as did many other companies in Poland. This brought order to many aspects of IT management, which was an undoubted success. Unfortunately, there were also dark sides to this solution. Even the simplest change required going through a multi-stage approval process.
At our Mark, any need or change in the form of, for example: IP address, operating system, application server, opening network traffic, granting permissions meant time-consuming fiddling with setting up so-called tickets, waiting for approval from decision-makers and finally on manual configuration and updating of the CMDB database.
What was the outcome?
How do you think the “Branded” business was satisfied with the timing of the new services? No. He was constantly waiting and asking what stage the service was at. After a while, everyone was tired and irritated “because how much can you do”. When the level of “pain” reached its highest amplitude Marek decided, after consulting with us, to introduce some kind of automation that would speed it all up, relieve his team of the daily repetitive tasks.
However, it is important to remember that once automation is implemented, not much can change. Fact, the administrator performs his tasks in a standardized way, but the implementation time for changes remains almost the same. Why?
It takes an administrator about an hour to manually install an operating system and bring it up to standards in the organization. With automation, this time is reduced to 10 minutes – a gain of six times. The problem is that the administrator waits about five business days for all approvals in the ticket system. As a result, the whole process shortens from 5 days of waiting and 1 hour of work to…. 5 days of waiting and 10 minutes of work.
The percentage gain for the business? A mere 0.07%. In practice – almost nothing
Mission: IT Automation- what did we do differently?
We automated the entire process from the moment the service was ordered in the ticket system, getting all the “approvals”, to bringing it to “life” ending with automatic updates in the CMDB database. Going further… and what happens when someone after time finds it necessary to add resources…. zadem problem, automatic acceptance, expansion and modification of entries in the CMDB database.
We have been realizing for years for our clients (not only for Mark) services that will save time for teams on boring and repetitive activities, We support them with our passionate team 😁 and VMware Cloud Foundation private cloud, soon in the latest version 9 (VCF9):
What does this look like in practice?
Results?
We approach the entire process by designing it together with the customer, so that everything works more simply. As a result, business teams no longer have to wait weeks, and the infrastructure is ready within hours.
The results?
- Change implementation time reduced by 80%.
- No user frustration.
- Increased efficiency of the IT team.
Marek knew it was the right decision. His company became more competitive and his IT department became a true partner to the business, not just a support department.
Be like Marek! Make your IT run just as smoothly. Contact us and find out how to do it!
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