Automating the cloud

Matt Quinn at Tanium argues that cloud automation is a strategic necessity as businesses look to enhance efficiency and reduce risk

 

The digital world is becoming increasingly complex as technologies become smarter, more sophisticated and more complex. To keep pace with this complexity, more and more businesses and organisations are opting to automate mission-critical tasks to eliminate the legwork from their operations. 

 

For some sectors such as retail or streaming services, the need for cloud automation might focus on speed or service reliability to manage peaks in demand. For those in regulated industries such as healthcare or finance, automation may be essential to ensure compliance, maintain security or manage risk. 

 

Regardless of the industry or sector, investment in automation is designed to have the same outcomes: to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and to take on the handling of repetitive or complex tasks with minimal human intervention. 

 

In the past, such investment might have been more associated with larger enterprises. Today, though, it can be just as transformative for smaller organisations with tighter budgets and limited resources, helping them to level the playing field by streamlining operations, reducing manual workloads and enabling scalability. 

 

Whichever way you look at it, by adopting cloud-based platforms that automate maintenance and updates, automation frees up businesses and organisations from the operational burden of managing on-premises systems, enabling them to focus on driving maximum value from their technology investments.

 

For many, automation is about working smarter, not harder. And regardless of sector or size, it ensures that IT environments can scale efficiently to handle increased demand and then scale down to save resources when the traffic subsides. 

 

Managing complexity

What’s common to all is that automation helps IT teams manage the increasing complexity of multi-cloud environments that often span providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. With ever-tightening budgets – while being expected to do more with the same, if not less – automation allows teams to work more efficiently, focusing on high-value work rather than getting tied up with mundane and repetitive tasks. 

 

Tasks such as patch management, software updates and vulnerability management can all be automated to reduce errors and improve operational efficiency. But this can only be done if there is real-time visibility into cloud environments. And even then, the data has to be both timely and accurate. 

 

For me, the arguments in favour of cloud automation are compelling. I would even go as far as to say it’s a ‘no-brainer’. But, before committing to this path, there are three key issues worth considering. 

 

Assessing the value of cloud automation

First, you need to understand the business value of cloud automation to your operation. You need to evaluate how automation can reduce error rates, mitigate risks and save time. By quantifying these benefits, it will give you crucial insights into areas such as cost reduction while also identifying possible efficiency gains. Crucially, it will help you prioritise which processes are suitable to automate…and those that are not.

 

Second, you need to identify those areas that will drive maximum value from such investment. Experience tells us that automation is particularly effective in complex, multi-tiered environments. In the case of an online retailer, this might be the store’s infrastructure including web servers, middleware, databases and load balancers. But since every organisation is different, it pays to know exactly what’s needed and where.

 

And finally, once this has been done, the final thing to consider is how you plan to implement any automation. As with so many things in IT, the advice is simple: start small and scale up gradually. As anyone with any experience knows, not only is automating an entire process at once overwhelming, it is almost guaranteed to lead to failure. 

 

Instead, the advice from those who have experienced this first-hand is to break down processes into smaller, manageable components. That way, it gives you much greater scope for flexibility. Then, over time and at your own pace, these smaller tasks can be integrated into a cohesive, end-to-end workflow. 

 

Whether it’s reducing risks, improving efficiency, or enhancing visibility and control, automation is rapidly becoming a strategic necessity. It is not just a tool but a key enabler for organisations striving to stay competitive while managing costs and ensuring resilience.

 

Why? Because as the digital world becomes more complex, businesses and organisations have to pull out all the stops to keep pace. And the only way that can be done is via automation.  

 

---

 

Matt Quinn is CTO at Tanium

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and Tirebolux