In an evolving digital economy, organisations must automate their IT infrastructure to leverage vast amounts of  data and draw relevant insights

Automation is a hot topic these days. Most of us agree that automating business processes can save time and money, making our organizations more efficient and innovative. But there is often an unspoken fear surrounding it. Questions like ‘How much time and effort will it cost to get my organisation up to speed with automation?’ or the elephant in the data centre, ‘Will automation leave my staff without a job?’ contribute to inaction or the late adoption of automation.

IT managers today face multiple challenges in an increasingly competitive environment. According to the Dell Technologies 2023 Innovation Index report, 35% of Indian businesses are dealing with the lack of automation to manage complex security technology. Many share common frustrations that slow down processes, increase costs and make life harder and less efficient than it should be.

Especially for medium businesses, lacking the extensive resources and specialist skills of large corporations, are vulnerable to facing risks. On average, medium-sized businesses have limited IT staff personnel and with a lean team, time is precious. It is estimated that 47 per cent of all cyberattacks target medium businesses, with extremely costly consequences ranging from lost productivity to business success. As the challenges of data protection continue to mount, the pressure for IT teams to reduce cost and to “do more with less” continues to grow.

Data Infrastructure

To accelerate innovation, an intelligent automation approach uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive data analytics to offload the management burden and free teams to focus on high-value innovation initiatives.

To enable intelligent automation, organisations must incorporate infrastructure that is built with automation at the core. By automating with embedded intelligence, a business dramatically increases efficiency, reduces human error and improves productivity.

Five Benefits

By leveraging automation and intelligence in the organizational value chain we can easily address the new reality of data while reducing the impact that complexity has on the business. An intelligent automation approach makes it easier to:

Leverage new technologies: Intelligent infrastructure adapts to any workload to provide flexibility while helping IT simplify operations.

Reduce the IT burden: A modernized infrastructure allows IT staff to spend less time on day-to-day activities and more time delivering business value. Intelligent systems can work together and independently, enabling rapid digital transformation and productivity while allowing organizations to scale without disruption.

Deliver-a-service simplicity: Infrastructure delivered using as-a-service operating models frees IT teams from having to deploy and manage hardware while improving the organization’s ability to acquire, scale and manage infrastructure as the business grows.

Achieve Proactive resilience: About 35% of Indian businesses are still dealing with the lack of automation to manage complex security technology. Proactive resilience automatically ensures data and network security with multiple layers of defence that work in tandem to keep hackers out while anticipating and eliminating blind spots before they can be exploited.

Upgrade business agility: By proactively replacing outdated resources at the optimized time, IT can better maximize the value it delivers for a business and its customers — while reducing costs. An intelligent automation approach gives the IT department the ability to say “yes” more frequently to innovation-related requests.

(The writer is vice president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies India, views are personal)