Randall, Information Technology automation, according to CIO magazine “is the linking of disparate systems and software in ways that they become self-acting or self-regulating” (Weldon, 2016). This can involve anything from small and simple to very large and very complex. If done with planning, IT automation can save an organization money and resources by making processes and procedures more simplified. The whole process of IT atomization will start by examining the system and coming up with an Information Technology Strategic Plan. When revamping and automating a system the organization will need to plan the system upgrades so that the system will be able to do what it is intended to do. IT automation is not easy and requires a whole lot of planning. According to Mary Shacklett “ it requires the rewriting of policies and procedures, vetting these rewrites for governance compliance, reworking workflows in the data center to accommodate the automation, and of course, retraining and/or redirecting IT personnel to work with the automation” (Shacklett, 2016). An organization usually start small and gets more complex. This allows the organization to figure out what would be more beneficial and help efficiency. Poorly thought out processes can cause loss of efficiency and loss of money. The choices of automation tasks can be overwhelming. The choice of what tasks to automate needs to be studied and planned. Automating reports is a place that an organization could start with. Automating reports such as Analytic reports will help everyone that uses them. There are processes that do not work properly when automated. Tasks that are time consuming and repetitive would benefit from automation. Assessing what your business needs in the way of business applications is not one that is automation worthy. Finding what applications could be automated, the benefits of automating, and what problems could arise from automating them needs to be researched so that you do not waste time and money on them. Making goals for automation is very important. The organization will have to put out a large amount of money for the tools needed for automation. This means the organization will want and need to see a very favorable return on investment (ROI). Setting goals will help the organization realize a favorable ROI. You will also need to come up with a way to measure the ROI of any automation processes that are put in place. Automation just for the sake of automation can make the work processes and flow worse. The organization will need to have positive ROI’s to make automation worthwhile. There are goods points with automation along with bad points. Your data center and cloud operations will improve. Errors will go down when they are accounted for. An error that comes up in automation will proliferate very fast compared with manual ones. You will see less variation from one task to the next. Compliance and security will be greatly improved. Manual it tasks can be sped up with the use of automating them. Automating processes takes time to plan and map the tasks so that errors are not made and can cause the loss of time to go back and repair. When researched properly and well-planned IT automation will help an organization. If the automation is implemented badly it will cost the organization. The goal of automation is to speed up processes and keep errors from happening. The initial costs can be big, but a good IT automation plan can make the ROI well worth it. Michael, Within complex IT environments, particularly when systems may be virtualized, or cloud based, implementing IT process automation is often a challenging process. The infrastructure reference model is the chosen enterprise architecture for its ability to support and enable the delivery of voice, data, video, and mobile service components and capabilities (Nichol, 2018). Enterprise architecture typically defines how well an organization will meet future business problems. It’s important to analyze how an existing company can automate as well as revamp its information technology infrastructure. Next, the positive and negative aspects of the selected model in relation to the operational health of an organization will be identified. First, how an existing company can automate as well as revamp its information technology infrastructure will be analyzed. There are often difficult challenges to overcome when automating or revamping an organization’s IT infrastructure. System complexity is just one of many concerns raised with IT automation (Ayehu, 2015). Within IT automation, it’s important to select a tool that enables the capability to begin small with quick results. The tool should also support enhancements when more complex automation occurs later. The IT process automation should eliminate the mundane, repetitive parts of the job providing time for more strategic IT tasks that cannot be automated. Some examples that are incorporated for quick automation include: Active Directory integration, Backup Log monitoring, Service failures, Incident management, and troubleshooting for problem identification and remediation. Starting small by identifying small automation opportunities that can be implemented rather quickly and achieve immediate value should be attempted before taking on more complex automation activities. Next, the positive and negative aspects of the selected model in relation to the operational health of an organization will be identified. There are both positive and negative aspects of the infrastructure reference model in relation to the operational health of an organization. There are positive aspects for having each user utilize the same image because it reduces administrative and support costs. Conversely there are negative aspects when a user requires a different set of applications because it potentially multiplies storage consumption on a VDI server. Another positive aspect when moving from individual workstations to a VDI server is that there is no longer a need to upgrade numerous PCs to meet the new OS minimum hardware requirements (Harbaugh, 2012). The negative aspect will usually require a major investment in server hardware, and possibly in storage and network infrastructure. Implementing VDI as part of the infrastructure reference model offers clear benefits, but there are two sides to every coin with both positive and negative aspects. In conclusion, within complex IT environments, particularly when systems may be virtualized, or cloud based, implementing IT process automation is often a challenging process. There are often difficult challenges to overcome when automating or revamping an organization’s IT infrastructure. Finally, there are both positive and negative aspects of the infrastructure reference model in relation to the operational health of an organization.
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