How Workload Automation can boost digital transformation

• With the tech explosion, automation is essential to today’s enterprise
• Five WLA best practices that can drive digital transformation

THE role of automation in data centres has become more important today than ever. According to research firm IDC in its annual predictions, 2015 was set to be the year when enterprises in Asia start to focus on automated workflows.
 
This new agility will help organisations create “immersive experiences” to enhance overall customer experience and create competitive differentiation.
 
As businesses turn to digital technologies to drive competitive differentiation, this innovation responsibility is more and more directly in the control of business owners and end-users.
 
Furthermore, the number of applications and platforms used to deliver these digital services is seemingly endless. In order to gain a competitive advantage in the midst of this technology explosion, automation is essential to today’s digital enterprise.
 
The established business applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Extract, Transform & Load (ETL), data integration tools, business intelligence and analytics tools, database platforms, file transfer tools, and other IT systems, are all tools that have one thing in common: They all have workflows that need to be automated.
 
Enter Workload Automation
 
Automating workflows for the above applications and other technology platforms has been the purview of Workload Automation (WLA) solutions providers.
 
However, as good as these companies have been keeping up with integrating to the core set of ‘required’ major commercial applications, databases, and other computing platform technologies, the fact is customers always want more and want it faster.
 
If chasing native integration for the above major commercial applications were the only problem, WLA vendors have done a reasonably good job.
 
However, the playing field has changed. There are new applications exploding across the IT environment, from big data to social to web scale apps, every day. Homegrown apps that are often core to companies and their unique IT platform also cannot be ignored.
 
Changing the game

Digital services innovation and integration requires both speed of development combined with strong and stable automation in the operations environment for companies to realise the time-to-value they need to compete today.
 
To achieve this innovation objective, for schedulers and app developers alike, WLA tools need to accelerate workflow development and offer a single end-to-end view and point of production control over the entire enterprise set of job processes and services, including Service Level Agreement (SLA) management capabilities, forecasting, self-service offerings to business users, etc.
 
Being able to apply these WLA best practices to the many new apps driving this digital enterprise competitive advantage is critical.
 
Here are five ways that workload automation tools are driving digital transformation:

• Collaboration: For application development flexibility to quickly build and change workflows that adhere to site standards without becoming WLA experts, while still giving operations full control over production. Having built-in, fully audited annotation ensures clear communication. When ready, workflow is promoted with automatic adjustment for the target or production environment.

• Customisation: An open WLA platform that enables customers to leverage all solution capabilities for any new application by building job types with a simple web-based designer. A public application exchange that creates an open community in which users can freely find, use, and share job types. The community engenders innovation and drives broad application support for the common benefit of all members.

• Rich core functionality: A true WLA solution that contains a broad set of capabilities and are available equally to all workload types. These include an enterprise-wide user interface that simplifies managing a complex and heterogeneous application fabric, service level management, auditing and governance, forecasting, historical data archiving, dynamic resource management, complex time/ date as well as event-based scheduling and myriad miscellaneous functions such as notification, service desk integration and management of its own infrastructure. Another key requirement of this core is the ability to leverage its benefits equally to all job types under management.

• Big data: Managing data and extracting value from it is the very core of modern computing. The upheaval in workload automation caused by big data and Hadoop demands a high function, tightly integrated set of capabilities that enable companies to leverage existing enterprise skills, processes and best practices to manage this new environment.

• Self-service: Today’s advances have democratised access to complex technology. It is no longer acceptable to restrict the use of high-impact, pervasive business tools like WLA to a specialised group in IT. Business users must have the freedom to manage their workload or to submit ad hoc reports and queries whenever they wish, using simple web-based and mobile tools without having to become WLA experts.

Accelerating the digital transformation within the enterprise requires focus on delivering business services faster with constant attention to higher quality, stability, and customer satisfaction.
 
The right WLA tool can dramatically alter your company’s ability to achieve the innovation speed and competitive advantage you need to win in today’s digitally-driven marketplace.
 
Gavin Selkirk is president of BMC Asia Pacific Japan.
 
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