Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Automation & AIOps Continue to Accelerate and Mature
By
Marcus Rebelo, Director of Sales Engineer, Americas, Resolve
With the Covid-19
pandemic remaining an influential force throughout the first half of 2021 at a
minimum, the technology trends we can expect to see are subject to a number of variables.
One thing we know for sure from our vantage here at the end of 2020 is that the
mass work-from-home movement is going to continue. Many large companies have
already committed to it for all of 2021. We also know that the ways consumer
behavior has shifted to be digital-first shows no indication of abating. As a
result, there are a few IT automation and AIOps trends that I expect will
continue to pick up steam the coming year.
Automation
Accelerates & Matures
Automation adoption will not only accelerate, but it will mature
as companies look to reduce costs while supporting digital transformation
initiatives in 2021. The pandemic has been a huge accelerant for IT automation
in 2020, and while the benefits are now more widely recognized, with IT teams
looking to leverage automation to help cope with cost reductions and other
challenges, we are not yet seeing widespread adoption and the true ROI
potential. In 2021, organizations across the enterprise working with tighter
budgets will continue to prioritize projects that deliver IT agility, improved
digital experiences, infrastructure resilience and efficiency.
Retail and Healthcare Prioritize AIOps and Automation
From a vertical market focus, we'll see increased adoption
of AIOps and IT automation by organizations that have been more heavily
impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the healthcare and retail
industries. In 2020, retailers were forced to shift key business operations
online, but many lacked the infrastructure needed to support the influx of
online customer traffic and overnight increases in e-commerce transactions.
Many healthcare organizations are dealing with archaic operating systems that
put critical patient data at risk, and they have been targets of repeated
ransomware attacks throughout the past several months.
In 2021, retailers and IT service providers that support
healthcare organizations will look to incorporate IT automation and AIOps into
their systems to help manage growing infrastructure, improve performance of
core applications, and protect critical data. Retailers in particular will
increasingly leverage chatbots and virtual agents to support the massive
channel shift experienced this year. Large enterprises that previously put off
the adoption of IT automation are also feeling the effects - website or
application crashes and system outages can negatively impact end users,
customers, and revenue. These larger businesses are now coming full circle,
realizing they need the additional support offered by IT automation, and they
will be prioritizing its deployment in 2021.
Automation Goes Hyper
Hyperautomation - the orchestration and automation of
multiple different processes - will be center stage in 2021. Organizations will
accelerate hyperautomation initiatives to streamline and integrate complex
business processes and workflows, further breaking down technology silos enterprise
wide. These silos will take longer to dissipate at larger businesses, but it's
a strategic conversation that will increase in prominence in 2021 as CIOs
broaden the scope of their thinking about the potential for automation to
accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
Automation Centers of Excellence Grow Organically
Due to resource constraints and the way businesses are
shifting, we're going to see automation Centers of Excellence (CoE) grow
organically throughout 2021. The further along businesses are in their
automation maturity, the more they recognize the need for an automation CoE. In
2021, we'll see small automation teams with the vision and maturity to advance
automation grow in size and stature as resources from the business side of the
house join their ranks. An automation CoE serves not only to centralize
automation functions and provide governance, but also to identify candidates
for automation, manage incoming requests, provide low-code/no-code toolsets to
enable non-developers to produce automations, and measure the ROI of automation
initiatives.
Customer Experience Drives Automation Development
The pandemic has highlighted a number of processes that are
ripe for automation, especially those that impact customer experience or
bottom-line revenue. IT teams looking to identify processes around these
activities often hit roadblocks because they don't understand either the
process itself or how the many systems involved are interconnected. This
knowledge often lies with subject matter experts, and the intricacies of these
processes have never been mapped to easily implement automation due to a
reliance on this tribal knowledge. In 2021, there will continue to be a move
away from tribal knowledge to roll out a broader automation strategy as process
mapping becomes part of the norm.
##
About the Author
Marcus Rebelo serves as director of sales engineering,
Americas, at Resolve, where he works with the Fortune 1000, leading telcos, and
global MSPs to design and implement creative IT automation solutions that
enable more agile, efficient IT operations. With more than two decades of
experience in networking, software, and hardware technologies, Marcus has deep
expertise designing and architecting IT solutions that create strong
foundations for innovation.
His love of technology started with his first Basic
programming course in the early 1980s, and he has held positions since, ranging
from the service desk to complex service development across a wide variety of
organizations, including NTT Communications, IPsoft, BMC Software, Wipro, and
Hewlett Packard. In his current role at Resolve, he has grown the sales
engineering team globally and worked with numerous customers on their journeys
to automation. He frequently speaks at industry events on automation, digital
transformation, networking, and cybersecurity topics.