Tales from the field: A system administrator's guide to IT automation

Happy Sysadmin Appreciation Day. Our gift to you: a new download called Tales from the field: A system administrator's guide to IT automation. This compilation of short stories seeks to share the excitement, frustrations, successes, and challenges associated with incorporating IT automation into organizations and teams across the globe.

Few technologies impact organizational transformation the way that IT automation can. IT automation improves security and compliance, abstracts away complex tasks for those with limited technical knowledge, improves standardization across the organization, helps organizations scale, improves continuous delivery, and reduces operational complexity and cost. But when adopting a holistic IT automation adoption mindset and approach, these business benefits come with an equal number of challenges.

[ Download now: A system administrator's guide to IT automation. ]

At the most fundamental layer, automation is really about people. A popular phrase within our Red Hat team is "technology is easy, people are hard." While this sentiment undoubtedly glosses over the technical difficulties associated with adopting a new technology, it's clear that the phrase has merit. The results from a recent study indicate that lack of training, fear of replacement, and organizational culture were all top barriers to widespread automation adoption. Six of the 10 barriers cited in the survey were people-culture oriented barriers, not technical ones. (Source:  IT Automation & Management survey, December 2020, Qualtrics and Red Hat. n=838.) People are the key to any successful technology implementation and adoption. Without buy-in, training, support, planning, and security, any automation adoption initiative is set up for failure.

This book is a compilation of stories about these very challenges, written by Red Hat authors who have struggled with cultural, emotional, and practical barriers to holistic automation adoption within organizations. These writers have spent years either implementing automation within their organizations, or decades consulting on the implementation and adoption within other teams. This book is a good starting point as you become your organization's IT automation expert—and explore what that means for you and your career.