Automation led IT Transformation

IT remains one of the key business functions which is experiencing a genuine push in its Digital Transformation journey since the pandemic outbreak; and rightly so. With the new hybrid operating model which organizations have shifted towards, business continuity is heavily dependent on its IT resources. McKinsey report confirms that the competitive divide between frontrunners and the rest has only grown during the pandemic with leaders driving transformations in the space of digital, cybersecurity and cloud migration.

Intelligent Automation capabilities are well positioned to cater to the changing market dynamics and some of the key business metrics which IT Automation can drive for the organizations are:

· Productivity Gains while driving efficiency in processing repetitive transactions

· Mitigate SLA violations while incurring delays in handling service tickets

· Drive customer/ revenue retention through enhanced customer satisfaction index

· Reduce incoming cases/ tickets volume through self-serve capabilities

· Optimize legacy platform OPEX costs

· Minimize security breaches end enhanced compliance at the perimeter layer

While there are multitude of use-cases where Intelligent Automation has a clear role to play, broadly we can classify them under four buckets:

Zero Touch Service Desk

Vision here is to cater to end-to-end Service Management capability with minimal human intervention, with automation covering scenarios around new ticket creation in an underlying application (ServiceNow, Remedy etc.), issue interpretation and automated resolution basis historical data. While most of the businesses are implementing ticket creation and assignment, there is a huge potential to go all the way to closing the ticket without any human touch.

High Availability

With a transformed Application Lifecycle management (ALM) / DevOps capability, automation can help ensure that business critical applications are always accessible to their end users. Some of the key areas of intervention are automated user access management, release management, license optimization and periodic monitoring/ reporting on recurring incidents. In addition, low code automation platforms are ensuring businesses are shortening their lead time to launch business applications proactively to address evolving end user needs

Integrated Infra/ Network Ops (Always ON)

While organizations have dedicated tools (like Anomali, AlgoSec etc.) to cater to specific IT use-cases, end to end business workflow orchestration is key to ensure an always-on network infrastructure. Automated infra health checks, network provisioning, vulnerability management, cyber security, cloud provisioning etc. are amongst the commonly deployed use-cases under this bucket. Automation intervention is also allowing organizations to transition towards greener IT services through optimal utilization of infra resources.

Reporting

Maintaining 360 degree view of the end-user requests/ incidents/applications/ infra status is integral to apply any of the simplification, standardization or automation interventions. As naïve as it may sound, but this capability is only available in bits and pieces within the organizations thereby aggravating their pain points. Modern day automation platforms come with capabilities around proactively mining data across channels, infrastructure network etc. to paint a complete canvas for the business leaders to take educated decisions

While there are numerous other scenarios for driving IT automation at scale, choice of the right automation platform is equally important. A non-exhaustive list below highlights some of the key capabilities the platform should drive to ensure zero touch, zero defect, always on and secure IT:

· AI capabilities to interpret unstructured information received through diverse channels (email, chatbot etc.)

· Low Code/ No code development to expedite ideation to deployment life cycles

· Flexible deployment model to cater to varied customer preferences (cloud/ on-premise/ hybrid)

· Built-in integration with commonly deployed applications in IT landscape