Kiran Naik

Automating infrastructure is a key to the success of the company. It can turn the loss making IT division into the profit making and efficient part of the organization. In the current market, lot of advanced tools helps to make the decision making process for optimum ROI.

Challenges in implementing the Automation Process for IT Support and Delivery

IT management has evolved itself into lot of drastic changes in the past 5+ years.  There are various factors affecting this trend. In today’s scenario, there are three major challenges that force IT management to think about automating infrastructure operations.

1) Complexity. In terms of the servers, storage devices, applications running under different geographic locations has made the IT management a more challenging. Lot of complexity involved in managing the hardware/software components.  IT has to accommodate servers, has to support whole new technologies like web 2.0, twiki, messaging and still IT has to able to maintain the bandwidth speed.
Document Complexity – This means that the IT staff hasn’t had the time to completely document all its processes for all of these varied systems and pieces of equipment.  Lot of difficulty in finding out the design flows for the complex system specially whne when the system/component breaks out. Complexity also means that when something seems to break, it may be some time before the root cause is identified and the problem is fixed.

Takeaway:
–>Accurate assessment of infrastructure to gauge complexity.
–>Make sure your staff has everything in hand what it takes to deploy newer automation tools/techniques.
–>Implement ITIL  – best practices in Industry

2) Money/Budget.
Required budget for the right kind of tools and technology is a key factor in measuring the IT functionality. IT needs budget even to buy the part of CPU.
If IT is directly linked to your company’s bottom line, shift as much of your budget as possible into cost-saving tools and away from everyday maintenance activities. That’s the best way to win friends in your enterprise. Of course, you also need to take on the challenge of showing you are a competent financial manager–that you can get a good return on your investment. Depending on your site, IT automation may provide a quick and positive return on your investment.
If you have SLAs (Service Level Agreements)  for the all network or servers, operating systems, for the software applications, IT automation tools can help to prevent situations where financial penalties will be assessed against you.

Takeaway:
–>IT automation may be a good way to enable a shift of resources, away from maintenance and to providing new resources for users.
–>Proportionate balance between the Budget, latest tools and resources.

3) Expectations.
It’s also important to manage the expectations both within and beyond the IT department. The expectations for IT departments have always  been higher. Users expect IT to control spam and viruses, provide 24/7 uptime, and very fast recovery at the time of breakdown. From the user’s persprctive they are all always right and have the lot of expectation from IT department.
Management perspective of looking at IT is much more. It is one or two levels higher than the user expectation. This is the very right attitude and enables IT department to move ahead. These factors may include SOX compliance, security measure at all levels, data integrity and authorization.

Takeaway:
–>Incorporate automation tools to help you meet business and user expectations.
–>Provide the hands on time for the analysis of the root cause.
–>Implementation of various internal programs like feedback and open discussion.
–>IT has to keep an eye on the latest technology.
–>Combine technology with the user expectation to meet business requirement.
–>Clearly defined process for internal and external department requirements.