Automation in 2025: 10 articles to read now

There were several new releases focusing on automation in 2024, which is just one sign that automation is now officially mission critical. With IT systems and networks more complex than ever, it’s unreasonable and unreliable to try to manage important settings manually. It’s time to embrace and implement automation in 2025. To help, here are the top 10 articles we published last year on the topic of automation.

1. Complexity, AI and more: Why automation is now mission-critical

In this article, author Cindy Russell references a recent IDC study commissioned by Red Hat, which revealed that “organizations using Ansible Automation Platform have seen a 668% 3-year return on investment (ROI).” Ansible Automation Platform helps improve operational efficiencies, business agility and application quality while reducing outages. Automation has truly become mission-critical for organizations dealing with the complexities of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, AI applications and edge devices.

Cindy recommends a “start small, think big” approach when adopting automation. Start with basic tasks. Get your teams comfortable with the concept and processes of automation. Later, expand to more sophisticated workflows, including event-driven automation for proactive problem-solving, and automating full multi-domain processes.

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2. Unlock your automation advantage with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.5

Red Hat announced the general availability of Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 in September 2024. Designed to simplify the creation, deployment and scaling of IT automation workflows across enterprises, Ansible Automation Platform features a unified UI to provide a consistent and centralized interface for operators, developers and administrators. Key enhancements include integrated developer tooling with generative AI capabilities, including Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, which can generate full Ansible Playbooks from simple text prompts.

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3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 STIG automation released

Red Hat also released a compliance automation profile for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 last year. Aligned with the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) published by the United States Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), this profile helps simplify the process of bringing your systems into compliance with industry security standards. The release includes Ansible Playbooks and the OpenSCAP scanner, and Red Hat Insights, to help you monitor and maintain system compliance.

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4. Automating secrets management with HashiCorp Vault and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

HashiCorp Vault helps manage secrets on the cloud. Integrating HashiCorp Vault with Ansible Automation Platform provides centralized storage, easy authorized access and distribution of sensitive information, while also automating your infrastructure management.

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5. Why the future of manufacturing will rely on open source

Manufacturers are beginning to break down the barriers between IT and operational technology (the machinery of the factory) as a way of making shop floors as efficient as possible. By adopting edge computing, manufacturers are improving deployment, maintenance and operations while also reducing costs and time-to-market.

When breaking down barriers, communication and information is key. Open source is literally designed as a collaborative ecosystem. With unparalleled access to data structures, development processes, and emerging technology, the manufacturing industry stands to benefit from open source development, software and automation.

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6. Introducing the Microsoft Active Directory inventory plug-in for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

In January 2024, Red Hat introduced an Active Directory (AD) inventory plugin for Ansible Automation Platform. This release addresses the need for accurate and timely infrastructure information in agentless automation environments. Designed to streamline the management of Windows hosts, this plugin leverages AD as a source of truth for inventory management. The plugin can filter and group hosts based on AD attributes and group memberships.

You can configure and test the plugin on the command-line, and then configure it within the Ansible Automation Platform for deployment. 

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7. Revolutionize IT automation with the new ServiceNow integration for Event-Driven Ansible

Also in 2024, Red Hat introduced integrations allowing ServiceNow to act as an event source for Event-Driven Ansible through an application available in the ServiceNow store. The application functions as an outbound webhook notification channel, broadcasting events from key ServiceNow tables directly to your Ansible environment, enabling real-time responses to system events. The integration creates a closed-loop automation system, where ServiceNow serves as both trigger and recipient of automated tasks. When a specific change or update occurs in ServiceNow tables (like a new incident or service request approval), the event is captured and sent to Ansible Automation Platform, triggering the appropriate automated response.

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8. What’s new in Event-Driven Ansible, part of Ansible Automation Platform 2.5

That’s not all that happened in Ansible Automation Platform 2.5 during 2024! Red Hat also updated Event-Driven Ansible for simplified event routing, introducing event streams with support for webhook connections. That means you can create a single endpoint to receive alerts from an event source, and use those in multiple rulebooks. It’s a great way to simplify setup and reduce maintenance, and of course it can automate significant parts of your infrastructure. The update also brings high scalability with high availability support, enabling the installation of multiple Event-Driven Ansible nodes for active-active use cases.

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9. Transitioning from Chef Cookbooks to Ansible Playbooks

The transition from Chef to Ansible Automation Platform has become a strategic choice for many organizations seeking simplicity, scalability and ease of use in configuration management and automation tools. While both Chef and Ansible Automation Platform share the goal of automating infrastructure tasks, they differ in their approaches. Chef uses a domain-specific language based on Ruby, requires agent installation on managed nodes and follows a procedural execution model. Ansible Automation Platform utilizes a declarative YAML syntax and operates over an SSH connection.

The migration process from Chef to Ansible Automation Platform needs planning, translation and implementation. During the planning phase, you work to understand your existing Chef infrastructure (including roles, recipes and attributes) so that you can safely decide the requirements for its replacement. The translation phase focuses on converting Chef recipes into Ansible Playbooks and converting attributes to Ansible variables. Implementation puts it all into action, and of course Red Hat support is here to assist.

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10. Mission-critical automation takes flight at Southwest Airlines

It’s always interesting to see how businesses are using automation in the real world. Southwest Airlines uses Ansible Automation Platform for network management and customer service. Southwest Airlines has a vast network of routers and switches across countless airports, with limited maintenance windows and all the operational complexity that comes along with air travel. By adopting Ansible Automation Platform, Southwest has significantly improved efficiency, reducing the time required to upgrade 30 switches from an entire maintenance window to just 30 minutes.

Automation has also enabled Southwest to create a standardized golden configuration for network setups to bring consistency and reliability across airports. The integration of automation hasn’t just streamlined IT operations, it’s enabled innovation within the organization, and Southwest plans to expand into infrastructure-as-code and utilize Event-Driven Ansible for even more efficient mission-critical workflows.

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