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Become the "Automator," Not the "Automated"

Mark Levy

"Become the Automator, Not the Automated." This is a phrase that has been used by many throughout the last several years and was first coined by Glenn O'Donnell, an analyst for Forrester Research.

While it's a simple enough phrase, it speaks directly to how today's organizations and IT teams must innovate to remain competitive. A critical aspect of innovation is acknowledging the digital transformation of businesses. The move to digitalization enables organizations to more effectively unlock the power of information technology (IT) to fuel and accelerate business innovation. It is a competitive weapon and a survival imperative. According to Forrester, by 2020, every business will become a digital predator or prey (The 2016 Guide To Digital Predators, Transformers, And Dinosaurs Benchmark: The CIO Digital Business Transformation Playbook by Nigel Fenwick, May 10, 2016). This same theory applies for those working on IT teams.

With digital transformation, IT has become the deployment pipeline that delivers digital assets to the customer. The faster IT teams can deliver these assets, the bigger the competitive edge the business has over rivals. However, it's important to note that this new role for IT is causing major changes. Organizational structures, processes, and technology are all going through a major transformation to support this "Need for Speed." Modern IT practices such as DevOps are redefining how organizations and teams are structured, and automation is redefining the types of skills and jobs needed to support the deployment pipeline. For those on IT teams, take notice and be aware of the changes as they will certainly impact your career. Understanding and embracing this change will give you a better path to future employment in this new world of IT.

The deployment pipeline is the end-to-end process of taking a business idea and delivering it as value to the customer. Long lead times, waste, and inefficiencies are obstacles to delivering at the speed the business requires. Most jobs that provide manual services within the deployment pipeline are prime candidates to be automated. Some tasks can't be automated but most tasks can and will be automated.

Losing jobs to automation is nothing new. Jobs have been lost to machines in the past, but as old jobs are destroyed, there is potential for new jobs and roles to emerge. Believe it or not, workers are more likely to benefit if they perform tasks that are complemented by automation.

For example, if you are a system administrator, learn how to design and develop the automation policies and scripts that support the deployment pipeline. If you are a quality assurance test engineer, start working with the developer to design and deliver the automated test scripts. Leverage your domain expertise by updating your skills to support the automation of IT. Automation will replace people in performing routine, codifiable tasks, however, when problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity are required, people will still have the advantage.

Automation also enables lower-skilled IT workers to perform complex tasks. Software delivery was once the bailiwick of highly skilled experts, however, with automation, those experts can be redeployed to create actual customer value. Lower skilled, less costly resources can be leveraged to deploy the software.

For example, one of the largest general insurers in the UK was deploying three releases a day for their main retail application. Highly paid and highly skilled Oracle DBAs and software developers were spending up to 50 percent of their time deploying releases into pre-production environments. The demand for releases kept growing and the team was reaching the point where the frequency of releases would not be manageable under the current process. To solve this problem, the IT delivery team acquired and implemented an application release automation solution and created a "single click" automated deployment which enabled release managers, and not Oracle DBAs, to perform all release deployments. In this case, automation freed up valuable development resources to focus full-time on creating customer value for the business.

The digital transformation of IT is in progress and rapidly advancing. Organizations must automate across the deployment pipeline to deliver velocity. Take the initiative, embrace this change, and accept the challenge. And remember, become the "Automator" and not the "Automated".

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Become the "Automator," Not the "Automated"

Mark Levy

"Become the Automator, Not the Automated." This is a phrase that has been used by many throughout the last several years and was first coined by Glenn O'Donnell, an analyst for Forrester Research.

While it's a simple enough phrase, it speaks directly to how today's organizations and IT teams must innovate to remain competitive. A critical aspect of innovation is acknowledging the digital transformation of businesses. The move to digitalization enables organizations to more effectively unlock the power of information technology (IT) to fuel and accelerate business innovation. It is a competitive weapon and a survival imperative. According to Forrester, by 2020, every business will become a digital predator or prey (The 2016 Guide To Digital Predators, Transformers, And Dinosaurs Benchmark: The CIO Digital Business Transformation Playbook by Nigel Fenwick, May 10, 2016). This same theory applies for those working on IT teams.

With digital transformation, IT has become the deployment pipeline that delivers digital assets to the customer. The faster IT teams can deliver these assets, the bigger the competitive edge the business has over rivals. However, it's important to note that this new role for IT is causing major changes. Organizational structures, processes, and technology are all going through a major transformation to support this "Need for Speed." Modern IT practices such as DevOps are redefining how organizations and teams are structured, and automation is redefining the types of skills and jobs needed to support the deployment pipeline. For those on IT teams, take notice and be aware of the changes as they will certainly impact your career. Understanding and embracing this change will give you a better path to future employment in this new world of IT.

The deployment pipeline is the end-to-end process of taking a business idea and delivering it as value to the customer. Long lead times, waste, and inefficiencies are obstacles to delivering at the speed the business requires. Most jobs that provide manual services within the deployment pipeline are prime candidates to be automated. Some tasks can't be automated but most tasks can and will be automated.

Losing jobs to automation is nothing new. Jobs have been lost to machines in the past, but as old jobs are destroyed, there is potential for new jobs and roles to emerge. Believe it or not, workers are more likely to benefit if they perform tasks that are complemented by automation.

For example, if you are a system administrator, learn how to design and develop the automation policies and scripts that support the deployment pipeline. If you are a quality assurance test engineer, start working with the developer to design and deliver the automated test scripts. Leverage your domain expertise by updating your skills to support the automation of IT. Automation will replace people in performing routine, codifiable tasks, however, when problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity are required, people will still have the advantage.

Automation also enables lower-skilled IT workers to perform complex tasks. Software delivery was once the bailiwick of highly skilled experts, however, with automation, those experts can be redeployed to create actual customer value. Lower skilled, less costly resources can be leveraged to deploy the software.

For example, one of the largest general insurers in the UK was deploying three releases a day for their main retail application. Highly paid and highly skilled Oracle DBAs and software developers were spending up to 50 percent of their time deploying releases into pre-production environments. The demand for releases kept growing and the team was reaching the point where the frequency of releases would not be manageable under the current process. To solve this problem, the IT delivery team acquired and implemented an application release automation solution and created a "single click" automated deployment which enabled release managers, and not Oracle DBAs, to perform all release deployments. In this case, automation freed up valuable development resources to focus full-time on creating customer value for the business.

The digital transformation of IT is in progress and rapidly advancing. Organizations must automate across the deployment pipeline to deliver velocity. Take the initiative, embrace this change, and accept the challenge. And remember, become the "Automator" and not the "Automated".

The Latest

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

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