A few of us recently attended Red Hat’s AnsibleFest in Chicago. We heard from some big brands, such as Wells Fargo, Home Depot, and DATEV eG. It was great to hear success stories regarding their automation journey and some important lessons learned along the way.
Automation has become a popular way of accomplishing manual IT tasks in a fast and error-free way that optimizes operations. Automations use software to replace simple, repeatable IT process workflows, freeing up staff members to focus on more rewarding, highly skilled work and standardizing operations.
Getting started with automation can be daunting. Red Hat can help your company get started by providing a framework for your automation journey. Red Hat helps to identify automation opportunities, create automations, and reuse parts of previous automations to create new ones.
Putting the Right Foot Forward for Automation
The long-term success of your company’s automation program depends on getting off to a good start. Working with a Red Hat partner can help your organization identify the right opportunities for automation among your IT processes.
The first automations you attempt should be quick-win opportunities that serve as a proof of concept and encourage company buy-in. A Red Hat consultant can help your business identify the automations that are most likely to be successful and that align with your business goals.
Once you have set up your first automations, you can assemble a select team at your organization to manage a pilot automation program using the Red Hat Ansible platform. Your pilot automation program will be underway once you deploy automations into production for an initial set of workflows.
Scaling Your Automation Program
Early success with your pilot program should allow your company to scale automations into an end-to-end approach. Initial automations should be used to create a set of standardized workflows that can be integrated with additional operational and business support systems for increased orchestration.
As you accelerate automation adoption, your company can transition your pilot program into an automation center of excellence (CoE). This CoE can work to create an automation-first culture across your business and all your processes.
As you scale your automation program, your company should take an agile approach by continuously evaluating your automation practices and optimizing them as you add new automations.
Getting Started on Automation With Red Hat Ansible
With the help of the Red Hat Ansible platform, your company can rapidly launch, combine, and optimize automation workflows and orchestrate them to meet your organization’s changing technology requirements.
Red Hat Ansible provides a foundation for building and operating automation at scale by delivering all the tools and features companies need to implement enterprise-wide automation for everything from IT processes to hybrid cloud and the edge.
With Ansible, your company can get started with automation quickly by accessing the platform’s open-source community and prebuilt Ansible roles, plugins, and modules that you can reuse and adapt. Ansible enables your business to share automations across the business.
Starting With an Automation Strategy
The very first step your company should take before developing automations is to create an automation strategy. Otherwise, your business may fall into the trap of developing individual automations that fail to gain traction.
Working with a Red Hat partner to design an automation strategy will help you transition to an automation program that spans your entire company and optimizes its infrastructure, security, and networking processes.
ProActive Solutions has the expertise in Red Hat solutions, including Red Hat Ansible, needed to get your company started with building your automation program. We take a consultative approach, working with your company to understand your business goals so you can align your automation efforts with them and develop an overall automation strategy.
Find out how best to start your automation journey with Red Hat solutions. Request a consultation with ProActive.
