Woo-hoo, UK ahead of Europe in this at least – enterprise IT automation
(2023/11/07)
- Reference: 1699336813
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/07/red_hat_survey_automation/
- Source link:
IBM's Red Hat has some good news for UK businesses, with a survey putting Blighty's businesses ahead of competitors in Germany, France, and Spain when it comes to enterprise-wide IT automation.
The poll, which quizzed 1,200 IT leaders in large enterprises across the four countries, found that just over a quarter – 27 percent – of UK big businesses reckoned they had already achieved enterprise-wide IT automation. This compares favorably to 18 percent in Germany, 16 percent in Spain and 12 percent in France.
Interestingly, a third – 33 percent – of UK IT leaders in the survey reckoned that without enterprise-wide IT automation, adoption of developing technologies such as generative AI would not be possible. And 36 percent of respondents opined that the top benefit of automating things was to free up the business for more creative thinking.
[1]
Unsurprisingly, the IT teams at the sharp end of automation were less than keen to adopt new processes. The vast majority of IT managers in the survey – 92 percent – said their teams would be or were reluctant to embrace change. As for the reason why, almost half – 45 percent – simply didn't have the time. A further 40 percent felt overwhelmed by it all.
[2]
[3]
And – reassuringly for [4]BOFH fans – 39 percent would simply much rather do their own thing without being told what processes or technology to use.
[5]Microsoft seeking robots to help automate datacenters
[6]More and more LLMs in biz products, but who'll take responsibility for their output?
[7]GenAI proponents exploring its use alongside infrastructure-as-code
[8]IBM says GenAI can convert that old COBOL code to Java for you
However, with budget cuts, demands for productivity improvements, and other factors – such as the need for compliance with government regulations – there is a certain inevitability to automation. Naturally, Red Hat has just the thing in the form of Ansible.
Richard Henshall, director of product management for Ansible, Red Hat, explained: "Enterprises today are asking where they can find the right people, how they can upskill them, and how they can motivate wider teams to embrace change. Automation should be a collaborative and agile movement; people need to be enabled and motivated from the start and continuously engaged."
The survey results unsurprisingly support that. According to respondents, 31 percent highlighted the importance of ensuring teams are trained and have the skills to manage change, while 29 percent noted the importance of involving teams in the process and ensuring their voices could be heard.
[9]
While Red Hat is keen that enterprises look to Ansible, there are plenty of alternatives for enterprises eager to automate IT processes. Puppet and Chef spring to mind, as does [10]HashiCorp's Terraform . Much depends on the type of automation being sought.
While the UK might enjoy a lead over its neighbors in the field of enterprise-wide IT automation, the survey also offered a clue for a different motive: 27 percent of business leaders in the country said that a lack of talent was their biggest business challenge. ®
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[4] https://search.theregister.com/?q=BOFH+&site=
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/microsoft_robots/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/28/llms_business_risks/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/gartner_gen_ai/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/22/ibm_says_genai_can_convert/
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/hashicorp_tweaks_terraform_with_user/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The poll, which quizzed 1,200 IT leaders in large enterprises across the four countries, found that just over a quarter – 27 percent – of UK big businesses reckoned they had already achieved enterprise-wide IT automation. This compares favorably to 18 percent in Germany, 16 percent in Spain and 12 percent in France.
Interestingly, a third – 33 percent – of UK IT leaders in the survey reckoned that without enterprise-wide IT automation, adoption of developing technologies such as generative AI would not be possible. And 36 percent of respondents opined that the top benefit of automating things was to free up the business for more creative thinking.
[1]
Unsurprisingly, the IT teams at the sharp end of automation were less than keen to adopt new processes. The vast majority of IT managers in the survey – 92 percent – said their teams would be or were reluctant to embrace change. As for the reason why, almost half – 45 percent – simply didn't have the time. A further 40 percent felt overwhelmed by it all.
[2]
[3]
And – reassuringly for [4]BOFH fans – 39 percent would simply much rather do their own thing without being told what processes or technology to use.
[5]Microsoft seeking robots to help automate datacenters
[6]More and more LLMs in biz products, but who'll take responsibility for their output?
[7]GenAI proponents exploring its use alongside infrastructure-as-code
[8]IBM says GenAI can convert that old COBOL code to Java for you
However, with budget cuts, demands for productivity improvements, and other factors – such as the need for compliance with government regulations – there is a certain inevitability to automation. Naturally, Red Hat has just the thing in the form of Ansible.
Richard Henshall, director of product management for Ansible, Red Hat, explained: "Enterprises today are asking where they can find the right people, how they can upskill them, and how they can motivate wider teams to embrace change. Automation should be a collaborative and agile movement; people need to be enabled and motivated from the start and continuously engaged."
The survey results unsurprisingly support that. According to respondents, 31 percent highlighted the importance of ensuring teams are trained and have the skills to manage change, while 29 percent noted the importance of involving teams in the process and ensuring their voices could be heard.
[9]
While Red Hat is keen that enterprises look to Ansible, there are plenty of alternatives for enterprises eager to automate IT processes. Puppet and Chef spring to mind, as does [10]HashiCorp's Terraform . Much depends on the type of automation being sought.
While the UK might enjoy a lead over its neighbors in the field of enterprise-wide IT automation, the survey also offered a clue for a different motive: 27 percent of business leaders in the country said that a lack of talent was their biggest business challenge. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZUoY1XT0kzuSlmo4cyAoPQAAANc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[4] https://search.theregister.com/?q=BOFH+&site=
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/microsoft_robots/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/28/llms_business_risks/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/gartner_gen_ai/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/22/ibm_says_genai_can_convert/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZUoY1XT0kzuSlmo4cyAoPQAAANc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/hashicorp_tweaks_terraform_with_user/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Of course BOFHs want to do their own thing
Michael H.F. Wilkinson
with quicklime and old carpets if needed. If heads of IT tell them what to do and said heads will be at the business end of a database normalization warning
Re: Of course BOFHs want to do their own thing
Bebu
《there are plenty of alternatives for enterprises eager to automate IT processes》
An enterprise grade automatic, AI enhanced, robotic defenestrator would be top of many lists from the trenches.
Given enough welly such a robot wouldn't actually require an existing window as it could "improvise" one in a convenient exterior wall using what it currently had in hand - usually a candidate defenestree.
(Thinking HHGTTU - a psychopath [1]Marvin on methamphetamines :)
Failing that a retrenched Dalek or Cyberperson with retraining might serve.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Marvin-TV-3.jpg
Potemkine!
And 36 percent of respondents opined that the top benefit of automating things was to free up the business for more creative thinking.
And absolutely not to fire more people, of course.
Doctor Syntax
"Enterprises today are asking where they can find the right people , how they can upskill and fire them"
No.
As usual, the C-Suite want to reduce body count, and the way THEY see it is to automate EVERYTHING.
The problem is this. You NEED engineers who understand the tasks they are trying to automate. Automate engineers out of the equation, who is left to automate tasks on subsequent versions of, lets say, the O/S. Things change. Automation scripts don't automatically change with them. What worked on one version of an O/S may not have the same effect on the next. You just ran that blindly on 100 servers and screwed them up? Who's going to unpick that mess? Does your automation have a backout option? Are you solely relying on backup/restores to recover from such an event?
Does automation have a place? Of course it does. It can greatly enhance productivity when used by the right people for the right job. But be prepared for a large amount of technical debt. Someone has to maintain and test these automation scripts. I really don't think you're going to be able to log a call with RedHat bitching that your automation script doesn't work - so be prepared to dig into "reasons why" on your own.
I have had to conduct interviews, and one of the candidates, when asked how to patch a system, could only say that "they ran an automation script". Is that *really* the technical level you want to reduce your engineering support base to?