Many infrastructure technology teams believe they have mastered infrastructure automation, but the data tells a different story, according to the results of a survey commissioned by Spacelift, creator of the infrastructure orchestration platform for managing the entire infrastructure life cycle. This research uncovered a stark gap between organizations' self-perceived infrastructure automation and their actual execution. While 45% of organizations believe they have achieved a high level of infrastructure automation, only 14% exhibit the behavior and technology patterns of authentic infrastructure automation leadership. The report also identified the Speed-Control Paradox, a key challenge organizations must master to reach infrastructure automation excellence.

The "State of Infrastructure Automation" report, published today, summarizes the findings of a Panterra survey of 413 infrastructure decision-makers and purchase influencers. A robust analysis of organizational behaviors, tooling, performance and results was used to compile the Infrastructure Automation Leadership Index, identifying top performers and isolating success patterns.

Key Findings:

• The focus of automation shifts as a company becomes more mature: Leaders prioritize control, whereas those earlier in their automation journey prioritize speed. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Leaders report having most of their infrastructure automated, with security, compliance and scalability built into every process, and 61% of Leaders track security incidents to measure infrastructure automation performance, compared to 32% overall.
• Leading companies are more than twice as likely to have implemented Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) best practices and are over three times as likely to have implemented automated testing for infrastructure changes.
• Leaders are five times more likely to have implemented a platform engineering team than their less-advanced peers: 29% of Leaders have implemented platform teams compared to just 7% of total respondents.
• Leading companies are twice as likely to get infrastructure deployments right on the first try, four times more likely to provision new resources in four hours or less, and five times more likely to deploy changes in production daily or multiple times a day. In contrast, over 50% of organizations take a week or more to deploy infrastructure changes in production, and 43% need to rerun their infrastructure deployments more than four times to get it right.
• Leaders have built high-velocity environments where developers can focus on building rather than troubleshooting: 61% of Leaders have streamlined workflows and reduced friction, compared to 45% of all respondents.

"Our goal with this research was to understand where teams stand in their automation journey and identify what sets high-performing organizations apart," said Pawel Hytry, CEO at Spacelift. "The survey confirmed that even with good tools and a platform team in place, balancing speed and control remains a challenge - especially at scale. This is where Leaders stand out: they strike a balance between rapid deployments, developer self-service and governance. The good news is, there is nothing that Leaders are doing that cannot be emulated by others."

"A flood of new automation tools has hit the market, and automation adoption is at an all-time high," said John Garrett, managing director at Panterra Research. "The reality, however, is that many teams think they're performing better than they actually are; achieving a balance between rapid deployment and control best practices is a trade-off they still struggle with. Our report breaks down how infrastructure automation leaders achieve this balance and what other organizations can do to follow suit. Our goal is for this to serve as a roadmap for teams looking to advance their infrastructure automation maturity. We've developed an Infrastructure Automation Leadership Index and a self-assessment tool, with Spacelift, that teams can use to move from overconfidence to actual excellence."

For those who master the Speed-Control Paradox, the benefits are real:

Free Self-Assessment Tool: Infrastructure Automation Leadership Index 

As part of this research, The Infrastructure Automation Leadership Index was created to capture the progression from basic automation practices to advanced, scalable and secure automated infrastructure management. The model captures organizational maturity across three principal categories: speed, control and collaboration. Organizations are categorized by their progress into one of four stages: 

• Experimenter: Organizations at this stage are in the early phases of automation, testing tools and processes in isolated areas. While some manual workflows remain, they actively explore ways to improve efficiency and reduce operational burden.
• Adopter: Automation has moved beyond experimentation and is becoming a part of infrastructure strategy. However, standardization and governance remain challenges.
• Optimizer: Significant progress has been made with streamlined deployments and improved governance, but gaps persist in security, compliance and scalability. 
• Leader: Automation is deeply integrated, with security, compliance and scalability built into every process.

As a companion to this research, Spacelift developed a free self-assessment tool so any organization can determine where it ranks on the Infrastructure Automation Leadership Index. Access the free assessment tool here.

Meet Spacelift at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe and OpenTofu Day

Spacelift is a sponsor of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in London April 1-4. Visit with the technical team at booth N560, and join Spacelift for OpenTofu Day on April 1.