Nearly two-thirds of IT executives say they plan to implement automation technology within the next year and a half. Despite this ambitious goal, however, 50% of those IT leaders admit that a lack of automation skillsets is currently hindering their progress.
As the demand on IT infrastructures continues to grow at an astronomical rate, an epic increase in complexity has inevitably followed. Manual incident remediation – let alone analysis of events and alarms – has become virtually impossible. And, of course, it’s no secret that routine tasks consume skilled labor hours that could be spent on much more value-driven IT initiatives.
So, what are IT organizations doing to increase the automation of their operations?
To answer this question and several more, Resolve recently tapped Gatepoint Research, who surveyed 125 IT executives across multiple industries.
The data uncovered revealed insight into a number of relevant and timely topics, including:
- The current IT challenges organizations are facing
- What level of automation they have already reached
- Common obstacles to implementation and/or scaling of automation
- Which automation use cases are being prioritized
- Anticipated benefits of automation
While most of the survey responses were relatively in line with industry expectations, some of the results were somewhat surprising. For instance, in terms of obstacles to implementation of automation, only 26% of respondents cited ‘resistance to change’ as a significant problem. Furthermore, just 8% of survey participants listed lack of executive sponsorship as a serious hindrance to automation implementation. These results demonstrate the increased acceptance of IT automation and a marked transition into a hybrid workplace where humans and machines work together.
Some of the other findings include the fact that almost every IT executive polled (all but 5%) said they were already engaging in some level of automation. In fact, 73% of respondents listed their organization at the intermediate or advanced stage of automation implementation. Of those automations, 53% are focused on provisioning and deployment, 42% on service desk requests, another 42% on incident management and 39% on configuration management. Again, surprisingly, only 26% were leveraging automation to enhance security efforts.
Another important question posed to survey participants was what they anticipated the biggest benefits of automation to be. Not surprisingly, the vast majority (83%) listed time savings and improved efficiency as the most notable achievement. There was a tie for the second biggest benefit of automation, with 42% of participants saying a savings of money and/or reduction of service desk requests due to self-service options as their biggest wins. This represents a perceptible shift from years past, when cost-savings typically took the cake.
Perhaps the most insightful question the survey posed, however, related to the expected deployment timeline for participants. The results of this question, once again, points to the ever-increasing ratification of automation at the enterprise level. Furthermore, with 73% of survey respondents expecting to roll out automation within the next 18 months, and nearly half preparing to do so over the next year, it’s becoming abundantly clear that intelligent automation is no longer a luxury, but a necessity in order to remain competitive.
Overall, the Gatepoint Research Pulse Report revealed that the future of IT operations will undoubtedly involve enterprise-wide automation efforts. Don’t have time to read the full report? No problem. We’ve distilled some of the key highlights into an infographic to demonstrate at-a-glance how IT automation is unfolding in the real world.
Download the infographic to explore a snapshot of the results and determine where your organization stands and watch our panel of experts discuss the results in our on-demand webcast.
