Chris Boos on Automation

Coming to PULSE 2010 almost felt like coming to a friend I had not seen for a long time. The setup is very similar to last year´s with some little improvements. Obviously the conference committee was actually reading many of the suggestions given. For example the temperature in the conference center is no longer below freezing… Well PULSE started off as usual with Al Zoller coming on stage and getting all of us on track. “All of us” means more than 5.500 IT professionals who have come to Las Vegas despite tight budgets and economic crises. Al Zoller announced that this year IT service management at Tivoli is all about integration. After the idea of breaking down silos of competence integration – between the remaining silos (?) and especially between all the tools and processes we find in IT service management today is a great idea and actually long overdue. The scenarios and examples presented in Al Zoller´s and other first day keynotes are still very much in the shadow of economic downturn. Even though every manager is emphasizing that we are in a recovery phase their choice of case studies in the keynotes either shows that they are still skeptical (like most top managers) about the sustainability of the recovery or that in 2009 Tivoli did only do successful projects in more or less crises resistant sectors like energy, government or PPP. Since I do not believe the latter (Tivoli is just too big for that) I would say Tivoli top management is on the same page as many other executives, who make a great public appearance telling everyone that the crises is over but do not quite believe so internally – at least not yet. Following Al Zoller´s keynote address we had the chance to look at an example of integrated service management or rather an example of the applied theory of smarter planets. The demo was about Las Vegas and the Venetian as a smarter city or building respectively. The demo was quite staged and the Tivoli executives on stage had to struggle with their acting skills. Personally I do not believe in the usefulness of the kinds of dashboards shown in the presentations, but it seems this is what customers are looking for at the moment, so IBM was right on spot showing what could be done and how these dashboards interacted with all the data sources and process management systems. Speaking of data sources, I think if we are really going into the direction of a smarter planet and the internet of things, the term information overload will gather new meaning over the next couple of years.

The guest keynote given by former vice president Al Gore was the best guest keynote at any PULSE so far. I had heard that Al Zoller was criticized harshly for inviting Al Gore as an environmentalist, because IBM has such a strong customer base in the energy and traditional industry sector. Well guys, get real – oil will only be there for about 50 years (if that long) and Exxon et al are also looking into other concepts. Personally I would prefer if everyone was doing research about nuclear fusion as the energy source of the future, but taking nature as an example is maybe too far out for parts of the environmental movement. Al Gore was absolutely authentic, convincing and just fun. And he got everybody to think about their behavior, especially giving a speech on energy efficiency in a city like Las Vegas. As Al Gore said, the next generation will ask us either the question “How did you do it” or “Didn´t you see it coming”. So congratulations for Al Zoller for taking the initial heat when inviting Al Gore. More than 5.500 attendees at the opening session of PULSE 2010 were enthusiastic about the speakers and the integration message of IBM as well as the sustainability message of Mr. Gore on behalf of mankind.

Looking at PULSE I have seen many more client presentations and case studies than last year. And – coming back to a point I made before – these presentations are mainly not about state funded endeavors, but about companies dealing with the economic down turn successfully in one way or the other. Tivoli has also introduced the opportunity to meet reference customers in one-on-one talks and start an exchange on their experience with Tivoli products, which I think is a great idea – especially after seeing the customer panel discussion as part of the second day´s general session and the positive audience feedback to the panel. Even though the CIOs of several major international companies were not really sharing any news when talking about their efforts to deal with integration issues and reengineering their IT business alignment, getting these guys up on the main stage to openly declare that IBM was helping them to achieve their goals made everybody else walk out with a secure feeling. Not just great marketing, but obviously also a job well done on the part of the IBM Tivoli engineers, project teams and account managers.

Some of the session presentations were of a little less quality than the ones I had seen in previous years. Maybe that is because everybody was very busy fighting IT budget cuts and the economic crises itself, but the content of most presentations was as good as I have gotten used to over the last three years. The only thing I am a little disappointed about so far is the track on Cloud Computing. This track is still very much about why clouds make sense and other theories that have long since been proven by reality. But some of the customer presentations (e.g. CSC or ITricity) had really good cloud examples. Maybe IBM feels that they still have to pick up the cloud skeptics by introducing them from the beginning, but I think the PULSE attendees are more cloud worthy than that. I have had no time to take a look at the new track on medium sized business, because the first two days are so packed with must see presentations that I simply could not spare the hour. But I am sure I will get around to the topic tonight.

The second day´s keynotes were dominated by Harriet Person – or as I said Ms. Security. Her presentation on regarding the integration of security into embracing change as an opportunity rather than being paranoid about all the things that could happen was authentic, fun and well received by the audience. The presentation also made the best points so far on the integration topic and its actual business effects (apart from all the effects of technical integration that I will not mention here, because those should have been addressed a while back). I already mentioned the customer panel which was a great idea of the conference designers. Some of the other talks in the 2nd day´s general sessions were a little dull to me.

I must give a little note on the usage of social media at this year´s IBM PULSE. Twitter screens all over the place, blogger meetings and lots of coverage on all kinds of channels have made it clear that IBM is serious about the social media community. Not integrating twitter into the main sessions however also shows that there is still skepticism about the uncontrollability or the enormous demands of interaction required by social media. I am sure the very positive coverage PULSE has gotten so far on twitter and blogs will give Tivoli´s senior management a hint as to the topic of being skeptics.

The term IT Automation has become a real buzzword over the last couple of years. With the economic meltdown still hanging over our heads, previously used potentials such as outsourcing and off shoring being a disillusionment , many IT managers have come to the conclusion that it is about time to deal with improving the “Run the Business” part of their IT themselves if sustainable results are to be expected. This little article will take you through the usage of the new “Automation buzzword” and will eventually show a solution on how to really automate IT operations.

The more IT turns away from being voodoo to being a business the more IT follows the idol of “the old economy´s producing industries” and this brings the term automation into focus. Normally this means giving a good tool to the IT operators (administrators) to make their job easier or to control their work. In other words the IT guys are buying a great shiny new hammer that will drive a nail into wood with two blows as compared to the ten the old hammer required. Or they install an assembly line that take an IT issue from one expert to the next until all of them have contributed their 10 cents to the final result. Of course IT cannot use such old style terms and this is why terms like Data Center Automation or Automated Provisioning describe nothing more than the shiny new tool and terms like IT Process Management or Operation Orchestration represent the optimized factory processes or assembly line approach.

But is this really IT automation?

Well if IT was the delivery of completely standardized products (service catalogue) and their different varieties this claim would be true. But most of the effort in IT operations today is consumed by dealing with non standard issues. This is because a long time before the shiny new tools were available, smart administrators were automating repetitive jobs in scripts, jobs and by using other neat methods – much less transparent, rarely reusable, but still automated. The unpredictable part of the administrative workload is generated when a “working system” (a fully functional productive IT environment) is changed following a client’s instructions or when a previously unknown challenge pops out of the blue and has to be dissected by several experts before it can be resolved. If we shift our focus from the workload created from such unpredictable tasks to the impact their time consuming resolution has on business, we can see that exactly these unpredictable tasks are the major causes for quality problems and can sustainably influence availability and performance over time.

These unpredictable efforts and the impact they have on business performance are not addressed by implementing standard IT automation approaches (installing a new tool or improving process controls). These tools are certainly worth their while and are responsible for ensuring today’s administrators and their managers can just about handle the massive growth of issues they have to deal with each year, but they do not address the basic problem of applying expert knowledge to unpredictable issues.

Looking at the IT industry in general and IT operations in particular, one must be reminded of the gold rush. Not only is the number of IT workers constantly increasing – despite ongoing crisises – the suppliers for this industry and their organic growth are in full swing. And this is why the established suppliers like to sell new shovels to the IT gold diggers – so long as this is possible. Only when the administrators realize that it is impossible to deal with their workload – not to speak of their personal ambition of doing something interesting and creative in IT – will big suppliers wake up and try to change their products. So why is the basic problem not being resolved? Well, quite simply because selling shovels (new tools for IT operation) is still big business and actual change is a big challenge.

Comparing IT automation with industrial automation is for the main part invalid. One should look at automation of IT operations from a different angle. Industrialization in the IT sector is moving forward every day, but since the major part of work delivered in this sector is virtual or at least intellectual, this new angle of looking at IT operations will have to focus on mental abilities like knowledge. Each and every one of us knows a machine that was built do deal with exactly such a challenge. This would be the autopilot in an airplane or other vehicles. This device (by the way first designed in 1914) has to create a result (keep a specific heading, etc.) even when unpredictable and unknown events and issues occur. It is the goal of this machine to keep the result intact as long as possible and react to change in its environment dynamically. Every one of us trusts these machines and these machines do nothing but take and execute decisions that would normally be taken and executed by a human. Only when the autopilot no longer knows what to do or is facing a problem that can only be resolved by innovation, creativity or even emotion, the real (well educated and experienced) creative human expert is contacted.

And this is exactly what IT operations should be like!

We have been working on and with such a machine for more than ten years now to solve workload overflow in our IT service delivery. With an 80% level of automation when dealing with standard environments (OS, network, etc.) and a 30% level of automation when dealing with individual applications, this approach has reached a satisfactory level of maturity. On top of actually eliminating manual intervention and giving our experts the time to focus their knowledge and creativity on interesting and completely new challenges, the faster reaction time of an IT autopilot are noteworthy because they reduce the business impact of upcoming issues. This results in a win-win-win situation for our customers, our staff and our company. Our customers get a better service at a better price, our employees have more interesting tasks to deal with and our company has a better margin.

By looking at the autopilot concept for IT operations it becomes obvious that a new angle of looking at a problem brings new and innovative solutions. Because in an overcrowded gold digging area you can have the best shovels on earth and still have no competitive advantage. An advantage would only be created by finding a new area to dig in or by creating a completely new method to mine the gold. This kind of a new approach is exactly what IT Autopilot for operations is. Looking at other industries and experiences from other sectors has created the difference between IT automation and autopilot for IT operations.

• Matthew – http://www.flickr.com/photos/bb_matt/
• Tony Oliver – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooliver/
• Nicki Dugan – http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenickster/
• Andres Rueda - http://www.flickr.com/photos/andresrueda/

for providing their images under Creative Commons license.

Blog postings on a conference before the conference is actually taking place are normally very vendor driven. Since I have attended Pulse 2008, 2009 and will now attend 2010 I feel it is time to give some feedback on why I think it is worth a week of my time (and of course what could be improved).

First let me say that I am not part of IBM and that I am normally on a very tight schedule, so going to a conference created by ONE vendor is a rare thing for me. For me PULSE is quite different. So here are my top reasons for going

1.    Get a good feeling for trends in ITSM
The name PULSE is well chosen. There are many conferences on specific IT operational topics, but PULSE is the only one that exclusively deals with ALL topics surrounding the “Run the Business” area. The general setup of PULSE already tells me whether it will be a year for strategic thinking or work on technical details. Besides the “chit-chat” strategy IBM pulls out around the Smarter Planet initiative, the topics at PULSE actually focus on real life challenges and to someone like me who´s head in constantly engaged with tomorrow´s IT operational ideas seeing what is “cool” and “necessary” and “challenging” in everyday life is just great.

2.   Consistent content and people focus
Contrary to other vendor conferences (well as I said I rarely go), PULSE – at least for the last two years and this year´s agenda looks good too – has managed to deal with today, with the past (talking about organically grown IT environments and the challenges they present) and the future. It is a very consistent evolvement. If you take the example of cloud computing. Last year it was all talk from the labs and theory and pioneers like John Willis (Opscode) were tweeting “will I get a press invite”. This year clouds are a reality and even if you do not quite agree with IBM´s interpretation of the cloud the sessions presented at PULSE summarize the current state of IT-nation. And John is back accordingly – now out of the underground with a representative role and with his own presentation.

3.    Qualified attendees
a lot of time conferences are about people looking for jobs, sales opportunities and everything else that is not really the focus of the conference. I have found PULSE attendees to be actually interested in the topic, experienced and competent. And then you get the these open minded people on all levels. For someone like me – who is equally at home in the details technology discussion and the major strategy – this is definitely a key reason to come. You actually get to talk to people – apart from the networking – who know what they are doing, who have an opinion and will discuss it with you. And I am talking about all the IBMers AND everybody else. In combination with the straight forward American debate culture, this gets things right to the point and I love it, if the marketing get cut out a little.

4.    Great networking
Well, this had to be a point. When you get between 4000 and 5000 experts in their fields around ITSM together, there is not just room for business and technical discussions and exchange it is also about building your personal network. It is easy to find people you are interested and even the big shots talk to everybody.

5.    Hands-on experience
The last point of importance to me is the chance to go to a room and actually try something out you have just heard about. You can kick the car before you start ranting and raving about it and you have competent people at hand to answer your intelligent (more or less) questions, and you get all the background information. This opportunity has saved me so much reading red- white- and blue-books just by being able to give an idea a quick try and then being pointed at exactly the right material.

Reading this I am singing too much of a praise, ain´t I? Well I do believe what I said and I do act on it. Still there are some points to improve (let´s see what is done this year). So to any PULSE organizers reading this – please bring back the Guru Galaxy. I never had the chance to talk to 100+ IBM Gurus like Doug McClure and others in one room before and it was one of the most productive hours in my professional life. And while I am at it, why not make it easier for common place people to meet with Tivoli management. Sure they are booked out to wind and dine customers, but the feedback and ideas they could collect right from the base. I know that – if you know the right people – you can get a quick appointment and I have enjoyed so very much. But why not make that an actual part of the conference, a part accessible to anyone who takes the time to get his message or feedback down to a few minutes. Well I have to say Tivoli management itself seemed to be interested. Last year Al Zollar himself appeared at the bar talking to anyone interested in a conversation one evening.

Ok, I am done now. I hope this will give some inside or hint why it might be worth to spend time at PULSE. Of course I follow my own goals, because I would like to meet as many people as possible who are interested in IT automation (that being my own topic of the heart) and thus I am trying to get you there –smile-.

Is it just me? Or do you also hear clouds everywhere you go but still you do not really know what to do with them. So even though I try to focus on the technical aspects of operating a dynamic environment  – which basically means putting an autopilot into the driver´s seat, since neither me nor you can “administrate a moving target” – I feel that the topic of cloud computing needs some real business focus. With everybody getting involved on the technical side and all the lawyers talking about all kinds of legal issues and risks a question I hear over and over again is “when can I use the cloud?”.

Well, here´s the good news: you can use “the cloud” (no such thing by the way) today. You just have to be satisfied with a limited business angle so far.

While the concept of cloud computing looks to change the way we buy, operate and use IT, many players present their services as an early part of the cloud movement. There are infrastructure services (no I am not going to mention the same names over again) or standards for outsourcing peak infrastructure needs as included e.g. in vSphere. You can also see a lot of the “Software as a Service’ guys positioning themselves to offer “cloud services”. Well to my judgement a lot of that is about marketing (SaaS works without clouds just as well (just as badly) as other IT does), but service providers like SaaS-providers are the first wave of businesses to benefit from the cloud idea because it is easy for them to embrace it.

Still, if you are involved in building, planning, operating or controlling a normal business in an IT sense, you probably want to know “When is the right time to go to the cloud?”, ”How can I start?” and “What professional services are out there?”. Well, you can attend many good events created by individual companies to promote their ideas (IBM Pulse, EMC World, …). You can join the evolutionary discussion on clouds at a CloudCamp and in a LinkedIn group. You can even go into the design of a completely open sourced concept and framework for cloud building and join Thomas Uhl and LiSoG in their efforts. Or you could join one of the fathers of cloud discussions – John WIllis in his efforts to get the world to focus on cloud computing. All these actions will definitely get you involved into the process of getting cloud computing into the real world.

But your involvement into any of these much needed and very interesting activities will not really answer your questions as stated above because all these activities are very much focused on either a single approach, a very wide range or an evolutionary discussion. This is why A. Fossen from A-Server has come up with the idea of “a CloudStorm”.

CloudStorm 2010 is a series of events in Europe and the US where you do not only hear from one provider or vendor, but from many and where the focus is very much on today and interaction between the vendors rather than convincing you to follow one vendor into deep dependency (avoiding dependencies is exactly what  cloud computing is all about in the end). So if you want to get a good overview, see many examples of cloud usage that is taking place today and get into a discussion with vendors or have them run against each other (you will find out there is more cooperation than competition, clouds could actually become the first real driver for business eco systems) you should attend one or more CloudStorms. When Arvid presented the idea of a CloudStorm to us, we chose to get involved into the whole series because I strongly believe that using cloud computing is not a question of the future, it is just a question of where to begin – and this is exactly where CloudStorm is headed.

So join us all in the next event in London on Feb. 22nd . Free for attendees and just before the DataCenter Expo (so you may already be there anyway). That is, if you are not at IBM PULSE 2010 at the time (which I will be). If you cannot attend, the next event in London will be on March 15th connected to Cloud Computing Congress. After that, we are especially happy to meet you in Germany on May, 4th. So you see, there is not really an excuse not to get involved and take home lots of information where you can start to actually use cloud computing and in what legal and technical context you can use it for your business.

Become part of the CloudStorm, register today at www.cloudstorm.org.

As you may have noticed – by me being silent = not part of my personality – the organization of the Frankfurt CloudCamp is putting all of us to the test. But today I have some great news for you.

We have published a first glimpse at the agenda of CloudCampFRA. I can honestly say that I am much looking forward to a fabulous event. Thanks to our sponsors we are able to organize a unique event in the successful history of creative CloudCamp unconferences and this is attracting great speakers.

You will be enticed into cloud philosophy presented by Simon Wardly (a great show is guaranteed) in the keynote. Visionaries like Tim Cole will give you security insights for the cloud and market makers like Cedric Hüsler will speak about business oriented cloud development.

With CloudCamp Frankfurt focusing on the business possible in clouds today, we have put together an agenda structured in four tracks:

1. Security and legal issues in the cloud
2. Business with the cloud
3. Developing for the cloud
4. Building and maintaining cloud infrastructures

No – there is no track for putting down yet another 25 descriptions of what a cloud is and why one needs one´s own definition….

I am also happy to announce (before this is even out on the official CloudCamp site) that we were able to increase the number of seats available at CloudCamp Frankfurt, so more of you can register and join in on interesting discussions, networking and game changing eco system building for the cloud environment of your choice. Thanks again to a great crew of corporate and media sponsors.

Look out for more news on CloudCamp Frankfurt at t3n and O´Reilly or follow @CloudCampFRA or our modern PR partner @psmw.

See you at CloudCamp Frankfurt

   Chris

PS: If for some highly improbable reason you do not have time to join us on the evening of Monday 28^th September in the Museum of the Moving Images in Frankfurt you have another chance to join a CloudCamp on the 20^th October in Munich

As you may have read on the blog of Mark Masterson , we are one of the primary sponsors of CloudCamp Frankfurt. This CloudCamp will take place at the Museum of the Moving Images in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on September 28th (Monday) evening. Of course you can register at www.cloudcamp.com/frankfurt but much more important you can send me your ideas for lightning talks and panel discussions to my contact address.

Museum of the Moving Images Frankfurt

I think many CloudCamps have dealt with many good concepts on solving the technical challenges put forward by a parallel on demand computing environment. We want to address these issues in a track called “cloud programming” in the un-conference of Frankfurt´s CloudCamp. But we also want to put a stronger emphasis on commercial issues and what is actually possible today in a commercial environment.

So if you have anything interesting to contribute (not to sell) to the conference or if you are willing to share insights you have gathered at your own company or with clients, we are very happy to register your ideas and consider them for a talk, panel or even a track moderation.

I am looking forward to many interesting comments and e-mails.

For arago as a small vendor and as a company servicing larger providers it is always a good idea to keep track of the big players and add that extra innovation and quality that makes a difference to the customer. This post will share some of our insight on how the big four vendors of IT service management deal with “automation” in their product portfolio.

To keep you from thinking we are out of our minds going against vendors like HP or BMC I can safely say that we work together very well with e.g. IBM and that none of the big four has anything close to our IT autopilot. In fact the big vendors seem to aim more at building tools for technical staff. Following this sentiment most automation tools from these vendors take some tedious task and drastically reduce the number of keystrokes you need to perform it with their tools. This approach is commonly sold as automation. Rightfully so, because some manual effort is performed by the machine after the tools are properly implemented. Another main feature of such tools is guiding the actions performed by IT service management staff by enforcing policies or providing runbooks and thus reducing the margin of error. But with all these tools the brainwork is still done by the guys sitting in front of the screens. IT experts only get a park of instruments to play on, rather than something that will play the basic rhythm and the background music automatically, letting them focus on playing the lead instrument. The autopilot approach as used by us and as described before provides for the intelligence that plays the background music on all available instruments. The only larger vendor I have come across putting some of the brainwork into their tools is EMC with its intelligent root-cause analysis platform SMARTS (now EMC Ionix Operations Intelligence).

So let us take a look at the product portfolios of the big four vendors in IT service management – BMC, ca, HP and IBM – and how they deal with the “automation” buzzword:

Table 1: Big Four - Automation Tools

 The concept of automating a single “kind of task” at a time automatically leads to many facets of automation. So there are many different “kinds of automation” on the IT service management tool market right now and many of the ITSM experts keep talking about these different automation concepts as a kind of baseline. There are for example ff0000;">data center automation000000;">, runbook automation000000;">, process automation etc. 

 Table 1 shows what tools from the big four vendors support which kind of automation approach. I will not go into philosophic descriptions on the different kind of automation. You may follow the links and take a look at some of the blogs I read where intelligent guys have wrung out their brains to come up with a definition. You can however see that you will need quite a few tools when you are trying to automate everything possible. You can clearly see who is hunting which buzzword with their latest acquisition or newest product. Every vendor except CA has focused their efforts and put or is currently putting a lot of work towards integrating their solutions. ca has acquired a zoo of very good tools and thus has the ability to provide any kind of automation tool approach. It is viable to ask about the outstanding integration aspects however.

Table 2: Big Four - ITIL Support

 As looking at buzzwords usually makes my eyes hurt, let us take a look at the actual work that is done in IT operation from an ITIL point of view. The operational processes at the core of ITIL v3 (and V2) are Incident Management and Problem Management as reactive processes, Capacity Management and Availability Management as proactive processes and Change Management as the only way to modify the IT currently in service. As automation should focus on taking all or at least some of this operational workload we have looked at the same vendors and checked which tools you need to support each of these processes that make up the everyday life of IT service management staff – see table 2. You can see that in order to support all your operational processes with automation approaches you will need the whole park of instruments to play on. I have come across many companies trying to minimize the risk of vendor lock-in by supporting different parts of their operational processes with tools from different vendors. Well, this is replacing the risk of vendor lock-in b the risk of bad integration plus it is giving away all the thought some of the brightest engineers have put into integrating one vendor´s portfolio.

In my opinion, if you really just want the instruments to play your IT service management band all by hand, you should at least get the instruments that are delivered in tune. But if you want better results, you should only play the lead instruments and leave the background music to a machine – that itself plays the instruments available. If you have this machine (the autopilot and/or other more solutions that do some brainwork), integration becomes a 2nd tier problem and you can go along with a heterogenious toolset. As there is no legislation concerning the working conditions for machines, there is no problem in bothering such a machine with sub optimal inter-vendor integration. The reaction speed of the autopilot will make up for the few extra steps needed to bring tools from different vendors into tune.

Last Friday night a difficult decision had to be made. Unfortunately a company BBQ in honor of five of my coworkers who have been with arago for 10 years now was in competition with Bruce Springsteen´s concert in Frankfurt. This may be considered a lack of internal planning or an opportunity for everyone. The solution was to push the party forward a bit. give everyone a chance to have a longer BBQ in the garden of our old offices and to go to the Bruce Springsteen Concert (and for those of us who do not need so much sleet, even to return to the party after the concert).  So a bunch of us went to the Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt and arrived exactly when Bruce stepped onto the stage after being stuck in a major traffic jam for half an hour.

I think not too many words should be spoken about the concert, because 003366;">GREAT is about the only word that describes it adequately. So I will leave it at that and just say that a lot of new songs, some old classics and many wonderful new versions of Bruce´s songs were played in a 003366;">three hour non-stop show. Just look at the “playlist” as published on the “Bruce Blog” by Stan Goldstein.

I absolutely love these “old” rock-stars. People like Bruce Springsteen go onto the stage andactually have something to say. They come up there and play great music and have a good time while doing it. A special note on Bruce: If any of us are fit enough to give a stunning 3 hour stage performance, tell 40.000 people that George W. Bush is a devil and look about 40 at the age of almost 60, we should have a BIG party! Congratulations!

I never understood the bad press “Working on a Dream” had when it came out. After this concert I would recommend an ear-checkup to anyone who has anything less than “fabulous” to say about this artist, this band, the new and old songs and the stunning performance of the current tour. All of us who went just loved it! Even the local press agrees with this opinion

Talking and thinking about automation so much can be like sitting in a forest and not seeing the wood from the trees. Only recently I have discovered that some of the ideas we are already applying at arago are a step beyond what is generally called IT automation. Therefore I want to give a clear picture of what is possible compared to what is widely known to be top of the pops automation technology.

Automation Tools for Stressed out Admins

As you have seen in previous posts, there are many buzzwords describing automation technology and they are all more or less cool and more or less useful approaches towards making the process of maintaining ever more dynamic IT and application landscapes. But this is not where it stops. All of these tools just take a part of the work process, wrap it into a nice user interface and hopefully standardized configuration. None of these tools actually does the maintenance work, takes the necessary decisions or finds solutions to upcoming problems or adequate answers to imminent questions. But that is what we want, isn´t it? So what we want is something to automatically use all these automation tools to “just do the job”, something to automate the automation.
The best way to explain these different automation tools and their application in IT is comparing IT maintenance to flying an aircraft. In order to keep the plane up and running there are many different tools and technologies that automate the actual flying process. There are also many systems that automate the task of executing all the commands that originate from the flight support systems. These commands are transported to the actual aircraft mechanics where changes in the wing positions, thrust, flaps etc are executed.  All these systems themselves automate manual tasks. A pilot flying a modern aircraft no longer has to manually move parts but uses automation tools to do the job for him. Still he is flying the plane. For tedious standard situations our pilot has another tool, called the autopilot. This system does the job of the pilot in such standard situations. The autopilot uses all the other automation tools aboard the aircraft to perform the task of keeping the plane up in the skies. Theoretically the autopilot would only call for assistance when it cannot cope with the situation at hand and that is when the pilot has to step in.

Autopilot Approach to IT Maintenance

It is exactly the same in IT. With all the automation tools around, you should use an auto pilot that can handle all kinds of standard situations when managing incidents, problems, changes, IT capacity and overall availability. At the core of this auto pilot for IT operations is an autopilot engine. A large set of possible actions is stored within this engine. The job of the engine is to combine and recombine these possible actions to resolve any upcoming issues automatically. Only when it encounters a situation it cannot resolve after applying possible actions should it contact the IT experts and ask for their assistance.
This approach changes an IT expert from someone who has all kinds of good automation tools at his fingertips but is constantly battered and chased by important and urgent issues to an expert who is contacted only when his expertise is required.

003366;">This auto pilot approach minimizes the probability of human error (which is constantly high in IT operations, as there is always more than one task that needs attention in a normal environment), guarantees short reaction time, relieves the IT experts of tedious standard tasks and give them time to concentrate on important and interesting issues. An autopilot in IT operations pushes the job of an IT expert up the value chain and improves service quality at the same time.

Kevin Timmons

A friend of mine – Kevin Timmons - won the Bintan Triathlon last weekend in his category 12 (!!!) minutes ahead of everyone else. Look at these results and bow your head. Congratulations Kevin and keep up the fun.