Home > News > Forrester on IT automation to cut operational costs, increase service

Of the various IT automation stories circulating, I think Forrester nail the IT operations challenges best. I take the liberty of quoting them, and links to the source articles appear below. First a story by Forrester VP Rob Whiteley, printed in CIO.com called “ Three Ways to Reprioritize Your IT Infrastructure Investments in 2010”

Check the link.

Quote: “If you do nothing else in 2010, focus on IT automation to build a more efficient I&O foundation.”

Some statistics quoted in these two articles:

• Infrastructure spend to grow 9.2% in 2010 (Forrester) • Change & configuration mgt software to grow 5.6% (IDC) • Problem mgt s/w (includes service desk) to grow 5.9% (IDC)

These are high numbers – why this forecast? Because the only way to meet the multiple demands on IT operations is to automate processes. The smart people in the industry have already started doing that.

Check the 2nd Forrester story here.

A quote: Evelyn Hubbert, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said IT organizations "are being asked to do the impossible - be more efficient and effective with less money and add additional technologies (such as virtualization) to reduce cost even more," said Hubbert. Hubbert said IT organizations "need to establish some order." At this point, that order has become ITIL, which provides agreed upon, common sense processes that can manage incidents, problems and changes "in such a way to take the guess work out and to become a functioning group," she said.

It has to be one of the simplest automation messages I’ve seen. If your IT operations are coping with new & changing infrastructure, increasing complexity, growing demand from the business for both services and service reliability, plus the business appetite for change (= efficiency for reduced costs) then there’s only one way to scale up.

Automate processes. It works and it’s proven. Throwing technology and tools in without process re-design & teamwork change does not deliver ongoing benefits – it just adds to the complexity. Note I’ve avoided the v-word. That’s a technology that by itself demands a huge change in IT operations.

At Delta Software we‘re monitoring a big trend in enterprise IT virtualisation (oops, v-word) – the need for standards & processes. Why? Because we see the importance of IT processes to enable continued deployment. The most recent story is a new CIO.com article on how some companies have used process automation to build their skills in virtualising – we have this available as a white paper for anyone interested in contacting us directly.


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