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IT process automation will evolve from and replace workload automation (Shown: DEC Flip Chip assembly line, 1967) Image: Eric Fischer/Flickr

For the past 18 months or so, one of the recurring anecdotes that Ive heard has been around line of business staff engaging the public cloud to run projects without first engaging IT.

To business person, the advantage is being able to circumvent the IT project backlog, CAPEX controls and the IT department all together. The likely motivation is to accelerate project delivery and relieve the headache of internal red tape. To corporate performance, this can hurt the bottom line through the cost of un-optimized public cloud engagement and also through un-integrated project development and application management. To the IT organization, this deteriorates control of application and infrastructure processes and widens the gap between IT and the business.

Enterprise IT must move strongly to centralize cloud engagement or risk losing more than just control over application and infrastructure processes but, on a broader level, its relevance as a ready and effective partner to the business.

In an effort to regain control, IT departments are making efforts to move toward a service model, where computing capacity is perpetually available for every changing need of a dynamic organization.

For some, the answer is private cloud. However, many are finding similar CAPEX and management challenges to the ways of the past where servers were provisioned internally for peak demand. For others, its a move to public cloud. However, the majority of those initiatives are young and recent research from Enterprise Management Associates indicates that 70% of IT organizations had to redo or rethink cloud initiatives after initial deployments.

Whatever the case, the need for centralized cloud engagement and overall centralized management of applications and infrastructure remains. Crack that nut and a cascade of benefits awaits.

In the rush to cloud, what many companies are missing is the larger opportunity that is created by a simple layer that spans all computing needs the workload itself. The workload is core to centralization (and regaining control). Consolidating the organization-wide computing workload requirements onto one platform that can automate the delivery of computing capacity across a heterogeneous infrastructure is a key step toward the Holy Grail of IT-as-a-Service.

Cloud is critical in this process as it helps optimize resource utilization to workload demands. Private, public, hybrid or uber it doesnt matter. Workloads need to run and it is ITs job is to ensure sufficient capacity to meet workload demands while exceeding SLAs.

As alluded to earlier, companies used to provision servers and resources for peak demand and paid the price for underutilization during low workload demand. Cloud provides the ability to match workload demand with capacity supply in a pay for what you consume model. IT process automation (ITPA) is required to ensure the capacity curve tracks closely to the workload demand curve, effectively eliminating the costs associated with idle assets between workload bursts.

Read the original post:
Automatic for the Cloud: ITPA Delivers Continuity