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By Gabby Nizri
© 2012 Ayehu Software Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.
IT Process Automation
Your Survival Guide!
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What’s in it for You?
The biggest misconception about IT Process
Automation (ITPA) is that it’s incredibly
expensive and complex. This eBook dispels
that notion and answers many of the common
questions, such as:
2
• How to begin the automation?
• Which processes should be automated?
• How to calculate ROI?
• How to evaluate ITPA tools?
• What are the key success factors?
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Table of Contents What is IT process automation? 4
What does ITPA include? 5
Why IT process automation? 6
Automation categories 8
Most important areas to automate 10
Scripting or ITPA tools? 12
Planning for IT process automation 14
Visually modeling your processes 16
Calculating ROI 17
How to evaluate ITPA tools 20
Two customer success stories 23
Ingredients for success 28
Summary – ingredients for success 30
3
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IT Process Automation (ITPA), also known as Run Book Automation
(RBA) is designed to automate system and network operational
processes, while interacting with infrastructure elements such as
applications, databases and hardware.
Used within data centers and Network Operation Centers (NOCs), ITPA
is driven by the need for higher IT operational efficiency , better
provisioning of IT services and reduction of Mean Time to Repair
(MTTR).
ITPA also helps optimize the delivery and management of cloud
computing and virtualized data centers.
What is IT Process Automation?
4
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What does ITPA include?
5
Automation addresses a wide range of
issues:
• ITIL incidents
• Cloud management
• App and service provisioning
• Problem remediation
• Maintenance and task automation
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Why IT Process Automation? IT Process Automation delivers
quantifiable, bottom-line results.
1. Free up resources by allowing your
staff to focus on strategic IT initiatives
instead of spending time on repetitive,
time-consuming tasks.
2. Reduce resolution time by 50-90%
with faster response to critical IT
events, particularly during off-duty
hours.
6
IT automation is no longer an add-on technology… it is quickly becoming the way IT must look to
manage its infrastructure.
“ IT automation is no longer an add-on technology… it is quickly becoming the way IT must look to manage its infrastructure.
“
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Why IT Process Automation?
3. Improve service quality up to 70% by taking actions
automatically in response to user requests.
4. Achieve 100% compliance to regulatory requirements with
automatic documentation and events trace-back.
5. Enforce IT standards by triggering pre-defined procedures
and escalations.
7
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Automation Categories
Process candidates for automation
can be roughly categorized into two categories:
1. Operational processes (also called data center processes),
which have a stronger focus on operational IT systems and
procedures – for example, backup & recovery, access
management, etc.
2. Business processes, which span across systems and involve
user activities.
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Automation Categories
9
The line between these two types of
processes is not clear cut. In many cases a
process may be both operational and
business oriented.
The InformationWeek survey results seem
to indicate that the majority of processes
automated are either operational or
processes that are combined.
A combination of
operational &
business processes
Business &
customer processes
Operational
& data center
processes
Don’t
know
Source: InformationWeek
2011 IT Process Automation
Survey
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What are the Most Important Areas
to Automate?
10
The InformationWeek
survey looked for the
answers what users think
are the most important
areas for automation (on a
scale of 1 to 5).
?
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Most Important Areas to Automate
11
Unlike the respondents, the
researchers identified other
“key win areas” that could
provide more value.
These include:
• Change management
• Configuration management
• Provisioning
• Routine maintenance
• Identity & access management
Source: InformationWeek 2011 IT Process Automation Survey
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Scripting Vs. ITPA Tools
12
Many IT organizations use scripting to automate tasks. This may work
well for well-defined tasks, such as provisioning a server.
Yet scripting has its drawbacks, particularly for more complex IT
workflows that cross processes and domains.
With scripting, the lack of built-in integration with IT management and
orchestration systems reduces your flexibility and ability to manage the
processes end-to-end – from triggering or scheduling and up to closing
tickets.
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“
Scripting Vs. ITPA Tools
13
Another problem with scripting is your ability to
keep an audit trail, review and analyze events.
“ Scripts are reusable if all the elements
are standard. This, however, is almost
never the case.
You should also consider
the issue of knowledge
management and your
ability to maintain and
keep scripts updated
over time, as employees
with operational
knowledge leave.
As IT processes change
and scripts need to be
modified, your simple
home-grown scripts can
become a full-time
programming commitment.
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Planning for IT Process Automation
14
Before you jump into evaluating
ITPA tools, it is well worth to plan
your time ahead.
Define KPIs for success.
Define what would be your
baseline metrics for success:
Hours saved? Number of
processes automated? A
service response metric?
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Planning for IT Process Automation
15
Know your processes. Conduct a
thorough system/process analysis,
where you document your existing
processes and systems, including
interfaces, integration points, and input
& output formats. It may seem a waste
of time (you already know everything
about your processes), but automation
needs to handle many semiformal
steps that humans perform.
Decide which processes to
automate. You don’t have to
automate all your IT
processes. Identify ‘quick
wins’ you can start with –
processes that will deliver the
most value if automated and
those that require a small
effort to automate. See
Calculating ROI.
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Visually Model your Processes
16
By visually modeling a process,
you are able to focus on its logical
elements and flow, before getting
wrapped up in technical details.
You can identify the exact
sequence of steps, define inputs
and outputs, logic branching, and
think about any human decision
points that need to be incorporated
within the flow.
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Calculating ROI
17
Return on investment for ITPA can be addressed at two levels – on the
macro level, the total ROI for implementing ITPA ( tool, training etc.), and
on the micro level, calculating the ROI for each individual process you
automate.
ITPA total ROI
On the tools side, you should take into account both tool costs and the
effort required to integrate the tool into your environment and develop
workflows. Some ITPA capabilities are embedded inside larger suites,
which require heavier costs, whereas other vendors provide dedicated
and usually cheaper tools.
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Calculating ROI
18
To evaluate the cost of generating automated workflows, you should
consider several functional capabilities, such as a visual workflow designer
that eliminates the need for scripting, the provision of templates with ‘pre-
canned’ content, and the integration with external systems.
Bottom line – you should not skip a POC and try to get from vendors
a feel for the duration & cost of automating your specific processes.
Though it’s difficult to generalize, the ROI on an ITPA solution that
should not exceed 9 months.
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Calculating ROI
19
Individual Process ROI
To evaluate the ROI of an individual process, begin with calculating
the current time of the manual task. For example, a task that takes
one hour of an administrator’s time, one hour of a manager, and is
performed twice a week, can be evaluated at 16 monthly hours. If it
takes 8 hours to automate the task, then your ROI for that process
will be two weeks.
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7 Questions to ask when evaluating
ITPA tools
20
1. Integration points. Verify that the tool can easily have touch points
and triggers with your data center systems, including different OS, legacy
systems, help desk, management systems, etc.
2. Deployment effort. Evaluate how much time and effort will be
required for deployment – setup, configuration, etc.
3. Required skill set. What is the estimated learning curve for
generating workflows independently, on your own?
Is scripting required?
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7 Questions to ask when evaluating
ITPA tools
21
4. Out-of-the-box functionality. Does the tool provide ‘pre-canned’
templates for various tasks, which can easily be tailored to fit your
environment and process?
5. Human intervention. Even the simplest automated processes will
require human decision. Can you embed decision-making logic in
workflows for remote automatic decisions on process execution?
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7 Questions to ask when evaluating
ITPA tools
22
6. Scheduling. While some automated processes will be triggered
by system events, others (such as repetitive tasks) will need to be
scheduled.
7. Regulatory compliance. Does the tool provide tracking of events,
reports and knowledge management that can help you? comply to
regulations?
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At the end of the day, what matters the
most is the bottom line. So, what type of
benefits can you expect to gain with IT
process automation?
Here are two great examples that
demonstrate how two different IT groups
automated their processes and the
change they have experienced.
Two Customer Success stories
23
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Large Bank Success Story
24
Company: Large banking group with over
250 branches, 3,000+ servers, and hundreds
of mission-critical online applications.
Challenge: Manual processes consumed
significant IT time. Slow response to critical
events during off-duty hours & weekends.
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Large Bank Success Story
25
Results: Automated processes integrated with
multiple IT systems (Patrol, Siebel, MQ, TSM,
Telephony..).
430 hours of manual work eliminated on a monthly
basis, Response time to critical system failures
reduced from 15 minutes to seconds .
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Insurance Company Success Story
26
Company: Leading insurance, pension, and financial
services group.
Challenge: Frequent failures of financial web portal serving
thousands of agents, Slow recovery leading to lost of business.
Results: Automated alerts, escalations and incident ownership.
Portal recovery time cut by 90%.
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4 Ingredients for success
27
1. Start small
Don’t jump into large-scale automation projects. Instead, aim
for quick wins - small, targeted projects that will deliver
immediate results. For example, repetitive tasks such as
freeing up disk space, or other file management operations.
2. Know your processes
Before you get wrapped up in technical details, you must
document your manual processes workflows. which processes
should you automate?
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4 Ingredients for success
28
3. Think wide
Though you’ll begin with small-scale projects, you want to
ensure you can expand your automation in a modular fashion
and apply automation to processes that cross domains (server,
storage, network), such as proactive maintenance tasks.
4. Prepare your team
Prepare your team for automation. Set roles and functions so the
IT group is trained and ready to adapt to new processes and
models.
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Get Started with IT Process Automation
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