New report finds automation paves the way for business and technical benefits alike

Today’s businesses are challenged with moving faster than ever before and often with less resources, both in terms of budget and personnel. The tumultuous landscape and shifting global dynamics that organizations currently face with more workforces moving remote is leading many IT departments to evaluate how they can continue to support their customers and grow their business in uncertain times. 

To continue to scale, automation needs to be made a priority investment. Automation allows organizations to get the most “bang for their buck” when it comes to IT investments, and not because it will eliminate jobs, but because it will free IT staff to focus on more important business initiatives. It also can be a make or break for companies as they move to smaller in-office teams managing vast networks and infrastructure.  

According to a new Forrester report commissioned by Red Hat, organizations are taking note of this, prioritizing automation initiatives over competing goals. The report, “Automation based in open source drives innovation,”¹ looks at how organizations are turning to automation, where they are looking to go from here with the technology and how leadership and implementers can align their goals when it comes to implementing automation. 

Setting up to scale

For the study, Forrester surveyed 378 infrastructure automation decision makers -- all of which are currently using automation to varying degrees. The survey found that all firms are prioritizing automation initiatives over an array of competing goals, however leadership teams and implementers are often misaligned on ideal goals and use cases. The survey also found that while all of the firms have experimented with automation, most know they aren’t as automated as they could be.

In part, those two things go hand and hand. Without buy-in from leadership teams, it’s much more difficult for automation to scale across an organization. To see and grow business benefits in the future, automation implementers and their leadership teams need to align on priorities and expectations. Without making automation a priority from the top down, it won’t succeed. By starting with automating simple tasks, implementers can see quick wins and then will inevitably  want to tackle the more complex and variable ones from leadership.

Beyond misaligned goals, organizations also report that a problem they often face with automation is that in many cases, automation is incomplete - often just targeting low hanging fruit. However, scaling automation within your organization and spreading it across more areas of IT doesn’t need to be a complex mystery. By getting the correct tool in place - one that allows organizations to collaborate across teams and creates a consistent user experience - can greatly help teams to better embrace automation and help it organically grow to new domains.