The goal of enterprise IT management is to have a centralized point of control for several IT asset lifecycles and users involved in one or multiple environments. Human resources often fall short in fulfilling this objective. However, IT managers can move closer to this goal with automation, but how can they apply different automation to major IT functions?  

Automation is for every IT function

Companies today use software automation to perform repetitive tasks to reduce costs and errors arising out of manual work. According to the 2021 Zapier report on business automation, nearly two out of three knowledge workers are more productive and less stressed when using automation software. Automation software can help with that for almost any business function, especially IT. 

Let’s take a look at four major IT functions and see how to apply automation to each of them. 

Infrastructure automation will grow significantly due to increasing investment in IT infrastructure

Businesses today have grown their IT infrastructure significantly. According to the International Data Corporation 2021 Infrastructure Tracker, cloud infrastructure spending has increased by 12.5% year over year, and noncloud infrastructure spending has increased by 6.3% year over year. The increase in infrastructure spending results in growing infrastructure size and complexity. For many IT staff, it is getting harder to keep up with so many changes in such a short time. Infrastructure automation software helps to simplify and streamline common IT infrastructure tasks such as provisioning, configuration, and decommissioning. 

With server virtualization tools, IT staff no longer need to set up physical servers and hardware configurations manually. However, they still need to provision the virtual deployment manually, which is time consuming. Another challenge here is to track the changes and versions for each deployment. To mitigate these issues, companies use configuration management software that acts as infrastructure as code (IaC) to automate these processes.   

Network automation should be a must-have solution for any IT organization

Network management enables network administrators to monitor and control the entire network (both on premises and cloud) to address service needs and business objectives. A network is created when two or more devices communicate with each other through the transfer of data. 

Today, even small companies can have numerous network cables, hotspots, routers, and firewalls. All of these connections and devices are complex to manage manually. With network management software, IT managers can automate the following tasks: 

The more IT teams can automate these processes, the more time they save from manually performing these tasks; users can accurately determine the device at fault, eliminating wasted time in finding the problem.

Security automation is the key to safeguarding all IT activities

There are two areas to consider when discussing security: threat detection and threat response. 

Threat detection software recognizes unauthorized intruders or other malware, so threat response software can respond to security breaches and reduce damage. Many companies realize that manual threat detection will result in slower threat response, so new security software today aims at automating security operations from start to finish.       

Security professionals can automate common security tasks such as:

• Detecting suspicious activities using logs data and configuration changes
• Building response workflows to customize security responses
• Managing incident and response tasks within workflows
• Generating formalized incident, workflow, and performance reports

SOAR tools combine vulnerability management, incident response, and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. SOAR products help integrate processes designed to identify incidents and automate remediation tasks. This results in rapid remediation of affected systems across environments in real time.

Application automation will become cloud application automation

Applications can be automated in various ways—monitoring, workflow automation, DevOps automation, data integration, and so on. IT managers can use application performance monitoring (APM) to perform the automation effectively. This type of software allows users to track web-based and desktop application performance in real time. It helps identify failures or slowdowns in applications. 

A significant component of modern APM solutions is conducting root cause analyses, which determines the exact failure points and saves time for IT administrators. For any company’s core business that relies on application performance, APM solution can automate the following tasks:

APM solutions also work closely with cloud infrastructure monitoring since many web applications are hosted on the cloud or are cloud-native. Cloud microservice, dockers, and other cloud apps are harder to monitor since they are complex and new to the existing infrastructure. This poses challenges for many IT managers. However, most companies in the US are already on cloud platforms, so the need for cloud application maintenance will continue to grow and eventually become a core part of enterprise IT management.

IT management needs integration on top of automation

While automation is a big part of IT management, integrating automation is still one of the biggest challenges. According to the G2 Buyer Behavior Report, integration is among the top three concerns for software purchases for enterprise businesses. This is especially true for automation, as the software is pre-programmed to run on specific platforms. 

Enterprise IT management software often comes in many different bundles. When considering a potential software purchase, buyers must identify use cases, integration, and other issues for multiple software within the bundle. It is common to overpay for a big software bundle, which hurts the return on investment.

According to the G2 Enterprise Grid^Ⓡ Report for Enterprise IT Management Suites, this software’s estimated return on investment is 20 months, which is quite long, considering the average contract period is 18 months. Potential software buyers should plan ahead and evaluate the product completely before purchasing so they know what they are getting.