Automation key for improving IT

Today’s mobile, cloud, and hybrid IT architectures require a new kind of IT service. One that’s more automated, proactive, and treats a disparate, multi-vendor environment as an integrated whole.

While businesses are focused on digital transformation to deliver greater efficiency and higher profits, IT teams themselves are falling behind the curve according to a new report.

The survey from IT services and solutions provider Dimension Data shows that IT staff only spend 14.5% of their time on innovation and new projects. Automation is seen as a key enabler for optimized IT operations, but only 20% of surveyed companies say their IT operations are fully automated.

According to Dimension Data, adopting automation accelerates an organization’s path toward digitalization with less risk, greater productivity and increased ability to innovate.

“Savvy IT organizations understand that if they don’t focus on efficiencies today they could miss the greater market opportunities of the future,” says Dimension Data Group executive for services, Bill Padfield. “Automation and orchestration skills put more processes and business activities into ‘business as usual’ for our clients. They require fewer resources, and they’re able to spend more time focusing on staying competitive, innovating new sources of value, engaging with customers on their channels of choice, and exploiting their data to optimize operations.”

One of the reasons organisations aren’t further along this path is constraint on investment. IT service automation platforms aren’t cheap to develop. It’s not just the tools, but the skills and processes, and integrating it all into a single platform across multiple technologies and vendors that costs money.

Given how important it is for businesses to transform digitally, and for the IT department to act as a strategic partner to the business to enable that to happen, it’s rather alarming that most of IT staff time is spent on mundane, routine tasks.

They found that a high degree of automation would allow each member of staff to manage up to 2.5x as many network devices, and 15% more servers.

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