Automating unplanned surprises out of your IT strategy

When you’re responsible for making the right tech decisions for your organization, the only good surprises are those you planned for. An automation strategy is what helps keep surprises relegated to birthdays and out of IT.

Whether migrating, adopting or operating, a well-thought-through automation strategy saves time and money, and enhances resilience and security. Predictability is essential. Technology offers new opportunities to innovate, create and differentiate every day. Whether you subscribe to the adage, “fortune favors the bold” or “fortune favors the prepared,” automation helps you to be boldly prepared.

I reference the term "automation strategy" intentionally, because the value of automation is not fully realized when it is used merely as a tactic, such as being deployed by a single team to complete a single migration or to deliver Day 2 operations for a single deployment.

An automation strategy takes an automation platform and wields it as a business process. Organizations that use Red Hat for automation open up the opportunity to use it as a kind of common language,helping disparate IT teams connect for greater skills optimization, more efficient deployments and stronger resiliency. It also spans the entire IT environment, from on prem to public clouds to edge, and alleviates the complexity of mixing technologies and workloads.

I think it speaks volumes that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was recognized as the leader in The Forrester Wave™: Infrastructure Automation Platforms, Q4, 2024, with the highest score in the strategy category. According to the report, Red Hat received the highest possible scores across 10 criteria including infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, community engagement, vision, innovation and partner ecosystem.

Organizations using Ansible Automation Platform benefit from a tested and trusted enterprise product hardened for security. It addresses operational gaps and inefficiencies, while helping organizations to remain competitive and free up resources so they can focus on higher value and more innovative activities.

Technology and tools will change, so when architecting automation as a platform strategy, the relevance of that platform, like any platform, needs to endure through technology advancements and to continue evolving in its own right. You need the flexibility to select and sometimes re-select your discovery, security and identity tooling, as well as incorporate new hardware or networking components. Red Hat’s open source development model plays an important role in creating an experience that keeps up with the latest technology and tools, as well as being tailored to enterprise needs.

AI also brings opportunities to make automation easier to deploy with code assistance and adds intelligence to event-driven automation workflows, and these capabilities will ideally evolve within the platform itself. The right automation platform allows you to experiment with and adopt new technology with ease and confidence from Day 0 to Day 2 to Day 2000.

To reap the benefits of a holistic automation strategy, a leader with visibility across IT teams and environments has to make the bold call. One challenge I often see is that this leadership role is not always clearly defined—and even when it is, automation may not be on their radar. And this is where fortune favors the bold. When a leader with the right oversight and authority drives the automation strategy, they can use it to manage tightening costs, balance prioritized spend on AI, meet new regulatory requirements and address skills challenges.

Technology will not get simpler—that is what makes it exciting and impactful—but managing it can be easier.

Beyond any industry recognition, what truly energizes me is seeing automation help organizations turn operational challenges into strategic opportunities. As you consider your own automation strategy, I hope you’ll find valuable insights in The Forrester Wave™: Infrastructure Automation Platforms, Q4, 2024.

Learn more about The Forrester Wave™: Infrastructure Automation Platforms

A full copy of the report can be accessed here.

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