Benefits and challenges of IT automation

Benefits of IT automation

A growing number of businesses use some combination of software and tools, such as ITSM platforms, to automate repetitive tasks performed by IT service teams. Companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Meta (Facebook) have used AI-powered automation for cooling, load balancing, predictive scaling and other tasks in their data centers for almost a decade. Automation done correctly can improve IT efficiency, optimize infrastructure costs and help organizations increase business agility to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.

Improved efficiencies

IT organizations can use software (infrastructure as code) to streamline technical and manual processes -- such as infrastructure management tasks associated with networks, servers and storage -- and improve cycle times from six hours to two hours, as well as throughput, error rates and task completion for better resource utilization.

Artificial Intelligence for IT operations, also known as AIOps, is the next generation of technology. It collects data from IT infrastructure and uses AI, machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze data and help automate IT operations tasks.

IT service automation is often used to centralize patch management and service updates. Common use cases for IT service desk automation, which augments helpdesk ticketing systems, include password resets, user onboarding and data access management. The goal is to improve IT service response times -- so the machine processes more tickets in less time -- and error rates by reducing human intervention.

ITSM is moving from the first generation of chatbots -- often built using robotic process automation (RPA) -- to AI agents. With the addition of generative AI (GenAI), "the machine is able to make better connections and to resolve patterns at a much higher level, a more human level," said Craig Le Clair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Business agility

Using IT automation, real-time data and analytics can help companies proactively meet demands and quickly adapt to changing business requirements and market conditions. Businesses often need to pivot to extend their reach to new geographies or target different demographics. During the pandemic, many companies quickly deployed infrastructure and IT operations to accommodate workers anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

"You had to change how encryption works. You had to change how people were accessing very secure systems," explained Frances Karamouzis, group chief of research and analyst at Gartner. "People had to rethink very quickly: 'How do I stand up a new environment in a very different way to allow clients who are outside of the four walls of the organization physically to connect?' All of those things have a ripple effect throughout an organization. Your ability to have business agility at the highest level is the highest level of value."

Cost savings

While businesses can expect to make significant investments in implementation and maintenance costs, IT automation can lower costs for infrastructure management, cloud services, application deployment, test environments and security incidents. In addition to improving efficiency, it can reduce labor costs.

Scalability and flexibility

A key feature of automation platforms is scalability and flexibility. As operating environments become more distributed and as data, applications and workloads increasingly move among different public, private and hybrid clouds, IT automation systems should be able to meet changing demands and handle higher workloads and data transactions with little or no performance degradation.

Security and compliance

Cybersecurity ranked as the most important automation application (85%), followed by infrastructure automation (81%), among 1,949 automation decision-makers surveyed in "Forrester's Automation Survey, 2024." Many organizations are taking a defensive posture with their use of automation, Le Clair noted, adding, "Let's first and foremost protect the company."

Automated frameworks and ML tools can automate workflows and repetitive tasks, such as domain blocking and compliance checks, used in systems management and network maintenance to help companies improve their security posture. With AI-powered automation tools, which use ML and data analytics, security operations center analysts can prioritize anomalies and focus on potential cyberthreats. AI-powered tools could address some challenges of security orchestration, automation and response platforms, which can be complex to implement and maintain.

For cloud security, IT operations can automate vulnerability scanning, identification of misconfigurations, near-real-time alerts and, in some cases, controls for incident response. Companies are also automating security functionality by building automation earlier into the development cycle, with security as part of the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline (DevSecOps).

IT operations can do better anomaly detection and remedial processes if they're using an AI agent to help resolve issues, Le Clair said. "Those who are coming in to attack those systems are going to be using those tools," he explained, "so you absolutely have to ramp up your investment of AI as a defensive measure."

AI-powered automation

As more industries adopt IT automation, platforms are emerging that can do more than automate repetitive rules-based tasks. These tools offer dynamic problem solving, some with low-code/no-code self-service portals, while others are service automation and orchestration platforms. Legacy workflow automation tools face increasing competition from platforms that offer better integration, scalability and support for developing technologies. Many technology companies are building AI, ML and NLP into their enterprise automation platforms, including "copilots" that can help streamline automation development and automate some manual testing processes.

AI tools could help to democratize IT automation. Traditionally, midsize businesses struggled to get as much benefit from IT automation as large enterprises. "You needed a certain amount of critical mass, or scale, as well as investment or sunk costs," Karamouzis said. "With AI, especially agentic AI, it's become a more modular purchase -- plus the power of the tools -- so midsize enterprises can get a leapfrog effect."

Reengineered software testing

More companies automate testing and diagnostics of functionality across cloud and on-premises networks, databases, systems and applications. These testing setups are designed to automate quality assurance testing in production environments to improve product quality, increase deployment speeds and ensure systems, data and workflow integrations perform correctly.

Automated software testing requires API testing tools and unit test frameworks that execute unit tests automatically when code changes. AI-powered tooling can automatically generate test cases, analyze code for defects and help perform test analysis. More than half of IT and software engineering leaders surveyed by Gartner said API testing is the most common application of software automation, followed by integration testing and performance testing. Survey respondents cited higher test accuracy, agility and wider test coverage as among the top IT automation benefits, while a significant number (40%) revealed they automated testing continuously during their development cycles.

App building without IT

Low-code/no-code platforms and AI code assistants enable employees with fewer technical skills to develop web apps, mobile apps and workflows. Citizen developers outside of IT, according to Forrester's "Automation Predictions, 2025" report, will develop 30% of GenAI-powered automation apps using low-code tools. IT will need to assist governance practices and establish guidelines for data management to ensure security and compliance.

Common challenges of IT automation

Businesses are advised to start small with projects that automate high-impact tasks. This strategy can help overcome IT automation hurdles, which can involve high implementation costs, integration issues, expensive technology upgrades, staff training and fears of job loss. Businesses face several challenges when they take on IT automation projects.

Implementation problems

IT automation is a major undertaking -- and not just in terms of financial investment. Many businesses have hybrid cloud environments with legacy systems on-premises, multiple platforms and large volumes of data. These types of environments can make automation projects technically challenging. Projects might require customizations, partly because of a lack of APIs and compatibility with modern tools, necessitating major investments in tools and training. Complex tasks and poorly designed workflows can create additional problems and make the benefits of IT automation hard to realize.

Integration issues

Integrating software so data can flow between interconnected systems to support AI tools and other business processes can have its share of difficulties. Businesses often need to invest in API management software and integration platforms because legacy automation tools might not support APIs for cloud services. Integration platform as a service can connect various systems and applications across cloud and on-premises environments to ease coding and middleware requirements.

False starts with AI

Despite investing in GenAI projects, many businesses have found that only about one-third make it into production stages. "The most important thing is selecting the right use case," Le Clair advised. "You have this combination of the control that you give to AI and the extent of action that the agent is doing, and what we're recommending is that companies focus on the more conversational, less actionable agents first."

Maintenance difficulties

Changing requirements, unstable interfaces and code updates (in cloud APIs and OSes) can make maintaining and fixing automation more difficult than implementing it. IT automation systems can be prone to error and might require modifications. A project automated six months ago, for example, may need constant attention. And what happens when the software engineers who worked on the project leave the company?

Automation skills gap

While automation can improve workflows and enable IT to focus on other decision-making tasks, building an automation team can require staff with specialized skills in automation design, cloud architecture, infrastructure and capacity management, systems automation, software development, security automation, testing frameworks and AI. People in these jobs need a wide range of technical skills, including scripting (Python, JavaScript, Bash and PowerShell). They also need to have soft skills such as problem-solving to address complex issues, as well as adaptability and communication to work with various IT and business teams. Cybersecurity skills, industry knowledge and solid experience are likewise required.

Multidisciplinary teamwork

IT automation and business process automation remain siloed at many companies. End-to-end process automation can encompass IT and non-IT domains. AI-powered tools and enterprise automation strategies will require better transparency and centralized management of automated systems, workflows and processes. Understanding which systems and tasks to automate will require cross-functional teams that involve IT and security, business, data management, enterprise risk, and finance and procurement personnel, Karamouzis said.

Employee resistance and retraining

IT process automation could change how some IT departments and other employees perform their jobs. RPA, for example, can act as an assistant to help employees make better decisions. These changes will require collaboration and a willingness to help the workforce develop new skills around AI usage and task optimization.

Over-automation

Some businesses fall down the rabbit hole when they try to automate complex tasks that require manual intervention. Other companies have acquired five different RPA tools and don't have the skill sets on board to implement and integrate the different technologies. It's important to avoid poorly designed processes and workflows that bake design flaws into automated systems. "You don't want 17 different ways to do networking or provisioning," Karamouzis cautioned. "You actually want one way, so the more you can get to a consistent, standardized process, then it makes it easier for you to automate it."

What to expect down the road

Companies like Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath are developing agentic automation platforms. Agentic AI technology can learn from new data, take actions and autonomously complete tasks. Roughly 25% of companies that have GenAI projects in the works are also developing agentic AI prototypes, according to analysts. While GenAI is about content creation -- it can help write the code -- once assigned the task, agentic AI could execute it to resolve IT issues.

In addition, new technologies and tools such as internal large language models with proprietary data and retrieval-augmented generation, which enables AI to retrieve real-time information while it's generating data, hold even more promise for IT automation and data management.

Hyperautomation is designed to automate IT operations and business processes throughout the enterprise. It uses technologies, such as business process management (e.g., task mining and process mining), integration tools, low-code/no-code platforms, RPA and AI/ML. Use cases in IT operations include network monitoring, cloud provisioning and security incident response.

"Companies that don't get on this more autonomous approach to business are just going to be left behind," Forrester's Le Clair said, because ML and RPA bots can only take a business so far. "It's this new way of thinking -- adding human intelligence -- that is evolving," he explained. "Thinking of new ways of innovating, new ways of doing work -- that's really where the future is."

Kathleen Richards is a freelance journalist and industry veteran. She's a former features editor for TechTarget's Information Security magazine.