How Important is Automation in IT?

According to ServiceNow's 2017 State of Work study, nine out of 10 skilled employees spend more time than is necessary on administrative duties. Are you one of them? The study also says that some people spend as much as two full weeks on manual and redundant tasks.

Working in IT means you live in a world filled with innovation. Because IT environments are getting more complex, so are the line items that must be implemented to accurately and securely deploy associated applications.

It's time to stop the insanity and pursue the way of the future through automation. In addition to saving time and money, you also increase efficiency and peace of mind. Let's explore the key benefits of automation in IT.

Keep it Simple

For automation to work in IT, it must be simple. When it's too complex, it makes it difficult to scale throughout the rest of the organization. It can only serve people well when it is simple and straightforward.

As your department and business grow, you need automated systems that are easy to learn, use, and implement. You're not doing your department any favors if only one person knows how to use the system. This relates to having a failover plan. You can learn more about implementing some Ansible scripts specifically for failover automation on Github.

More than one group of people need to know how to execute automated tasks to ensure continuity. To illustrate, using a simple automation language such as Ansible can help admins increase the speed of application delivery, and instead focus on efforts around promoting business value.

Focus on Production

Automation in IT helps to create huge efficiencies while eliminating the possibility of human Kill. You don't have to overhaul your entire IT department either. This is why it should come as no surprise that an increasing number of IT departments are continually seeking to automate mundane tasks.

Even if you automate just one section of your processes, you can make a major impact on productivity. For example, there was once a time when virus scanning was a manual process. Can you imagine the work involved?

Yes, IT admins once had to travel from each machine to ensure PCs were virus free and tools were updated. Thankfully, modern virus scanning is completely automated.

Reduce the Number of Hours Spent on a Project

What would you do if only you had more time? A simple sentence probably wouldn't suffice as a response. The one thing we all wish we had more of is time.

Think of a scenario when your team is building a new product. You will have several iterations during development. Here are a few of the steps involved:

• Verifying new requirements

• Implementing new features

• Testing

Wouldn't it make more sense to automate the testing? Using simple automated scripts is both time- and cost-effective. As a whole, it would reduce the time spent on testing.

But it's not just product testing. There is also unit testing, regression testing, load testing, and more. When you take a look at the big picture, the objective should be on a speedy and efficient cycle that continues to enhance business value for the company and its consumers.

Better Outcome

In IT, even the smallest Kill can wreak havoc on connected systems. And, it goes without saying that one of the biggest causes of malfunctions is human Kill.

This can lead to unhappy managers, employees, or consumers. Whether it is the mishandling of a sensitive date or missing a step, manual processes are prone to human Kill. Then, it can spiral into something that would be costly for the business.

Using automation in IT helps to make use of verification features that block inaccurate information. In terms of security, encryption and user permissions also can be set up to protect sensitive data.

Automate Digital Certificate Management

There is a layered approach to security where certificates have become more important. In a large enterprise, you might have thousands of certificates to manage. Not to mention to mention the fact that they must be monitored during their complete lifecycle from issuance to renewal.

If even one certificate is expired, it can impact a wide variety of systems. Using spreadsheets and manually installing certificates on servers and devices is an exercise in futility.

You need certificates for securing websites and servers, offering multi-factor authentication, digitally signing documents and more. Certificates then expire over varying periods of time and, they may come from a wide variety of vendors. Instead of dealing with this manually, and potentially disrupting business workflows, automation can seamlessly manage these types of tasks.

Last but not least, there's no need to worry about whether you will automate yourself out of a job. Human management and intervention are always going to be required. So why not make your life a little easier with automation?

Get started today by learning all about Ansible so you can use automation to simplify your IT life.