The Pragmatic Evolution of Automation Part of the Next Gen IT Whitepaper Series by HCL Technologies

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1 The Pragmatic Evolution of Automation Part of the Next Gen IT Whitepaper Series by HCL Technologies WHITEPAPER OCTOBER 2016

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY CANNOT BE SURMOUNTED BY AUTOMATION ALONE 3 MULTI-MODAL I.T. IN A 21ST CENTURY ENTERPRISE AND THE ROLE OF AUTONOMICS & ORCHESTRATION 3 THE EVOLUTION OF AUTOMATION 4 MAKING AUTOMATION WORK WITH A PRAGMATIC APPROACH 6 AUTOMATION MATURITY IS TIED TO ORGANIZATIONAL MATURITY 7 AUTONOMICS AND ORCHESTRATION IN PRACTICE 9 CONCLUSION: AUTONOMICS AND ORCHESTRATION POWER THE 21ST CENTURY ENTERPRISE 9 ABOUT HCL , HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

3 INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY CANNOT BE SURMOUNTED BY AUTOMATION ALONE When automation was introduced in the workplace, it was believed to be the answer to the challenges of the digital economy. But here s the paradox: automation alone, per se, cannot surmount the challenges of the digital economy. The reason is a pretty basic mismatch. Automation is geared towards providing point efficiencies in a repetitive, predictable scenario. The key words here are repetitive and predictable. On the other hand, the hallmark of the digital economy is rapid, relentless change. A successful business within this landscape requires continuous innovation and the agility to accelerate, decelerate, switch tracks or pivot in accordance with changing environment; and within each business, diverse functions need to operate at varying speeds determined by the demands of business. To support this agility, information technology must have the ability to operate in multiple modes or multi-modal IT. Automation alone cannot enable this; it needs something else to amplify its impact beyond tasks. It needs orchestration. MULTI-MODAL I.T. IN A 21 ST CENTURY ENTERPRISE AND THE ROLE OF AUTONOMICS & ORCHESTRATION Multi-modal IT is central to today s successful business the new 21st Century Enterprise (21CE). The 20th century organization had a single face of IT, structured to provide systems of support to all functions in the organization with a clear demarcation between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement. The business model revolved around functions, which decided the needs of their value chains. The role of IT was to build independent systems to support each of them (HR, Finance, Marketing, etc.) and then integrate them on a common system, creating a tangled web. All the systems ran on one speed, determined by the specifications of the IT infrastructure in the company, thus limiting the company s ability to move faster or make strategic pivots, if it needed to. In the 21st century, the focus is more on creating a connected enterprise (see Figure 1) in which different functions can work collaboratively across traditional silos, using stateless digital applications and an increasingly software defined infrastructure. This creates an agile enterprise which can quickly respond to opportunities. Automation levers are then applied to ensure that operations are lean and efficient. Apps / Digital Platforms Data Connected Enterprise Devices Figure 1. The 21st century connected enterprise 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 3

4 Some Definitions: Autonomics Task and/or process automation that is driven by input from AIenabled systems; and by insight derived through predictive analytics. Virtual agents enabled through cognitive technologies is an example of application of autonomics in an enterprise. Orchestration Application of autonomics across functional boundaries within and outside an organization, resulting in automation of entire process chains involving multiple steps, tasks and stakeholders. These not only require application of autonomics to automate individual tasks, but also automate complex workflows, cross-service integration and DevOps integration to enable businesses to generate desired outcomes. Autonomics and orchestration are fundamental components of any successful multi-modal IT endeavor. Like a geared transmission regulates the power required by a vehicle to provide the right balance of power and efficiency, autonomics and orchestration work together to ensure that cost and effort efficiency is balanced with speed and agility, with power being directed to what is needed the most. THE EVOLUTION OF AUTOMATION How then can automation, a technology that is geared for predictable repetitive work, be expected to overcome the challenges of an entirely unpredictable, ever-changing environment in which different parts of businesses require different speeds, adjustable in near-real time response to changes? So, was automation all hype? Was the belief that automation held the key to success in the digital era just a pie in the sky? Certainly not. The underlying motive for automation is often misconstrued, limiting it to mere reduction of costs and workforce, when it is, in fact, to enable a business to make swift, efficient and timely responses to a rapidly changing environment, and providing people the freedom from repetitive tasks to focus on more creative solutions. This is what automation is meant to be. A false orientation about these values can drive companies to take short-sighted decisions. And this can lead to a Pandora s Box of associated problems, apprehensions and eventually, marginal benefits falling far short of the promise. AUTOMATION MERELY BRINGS EFFICIENCY. AUTONOMICS CREATES SIMPLICITY. In order to deliver on the intended true value and thereby address the challenges of a dynamic era driven by unprecedented change, automation needs to transform into autonomics. Traditional automation enables lean operations in a company. It evolves into autonomics with the additional potency of machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and analytics making it exponentially more powerful. While traditional automation was focused on bring efficiency, modern enterprises need more than that. To be truly lean and agile, they need to be simple. 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 4

5 AGILE ORCHESTRATION SIMPLE LEAN AUTONOMICS AUTOMATION Figure 2. The Evolution of I.T. Automation There s been incessant buzz about futuristic technologies like Artificial Intelligence, robotics and machine learning or cognitive computing in the recent past. Understandably so, with robots like Nao teaching Taekwondo and Pepper dancing her way into the hearts of Android developers. However, autonomics is hard-nosed business strategy. It combines the strength of the world s most powerful supercomputer technologies with some truly innovative automation solutions to empower the 21st Century Enterprise and radically transform the way business is run. Going far above and beyond the traditional point efficiencies achieved through automation, autonomics leverages software defined infrastructure and stateless apps to enable AIpowered Robotic Process Automation and create simplified IT. There is a world of difference between tired, over-worked IT staff running scripts to automate tasks and intelligent autonomics systems listening through millions of events, suppressing noise, providing insight and even taking corrective/preventive action. This difference is not only freeing up IT resources to do higher order management tasks, but also in an overall simplification of operations. This is what allows a 21st Century Enterprise to think like a dynamic start-up and act like a lean enterprise. It is all about achieving greater standards of accuracy, accountability, and agility while smoothly and cohesively running operations in order to improve efficiency, costs and competitive advantage. It is also about helping achieve waste elimination across a variety of IT processes, not only improving key IT metrics significantly, but also improving the experience index and IT support productivity, while freeing up human resources to tackle higher order tasks and simultaneously reducing the load on IT. Advanced machine learning and Artificial Intelligence technology, empowers IT users, administrators and robotic controllers to detect potential issues and take preventive action significantly impacting both IT and business performance and availability and also enables systems to self-heal without any human intervention whatsoever. Altogether, this step-up from automation to autonomics simplifies operations to instil greater flexibility into the lean and efficient operations. This is a crucial element enabling continuous reinvention, a non-negotiable for business success today. And more importantly, it enables multi-modal IT, so that each part of the business can change at the pace that is best-suited for it. 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 5

6 CREATING BUSINESS AGILITY WITH ORCHESTRATION Once the organization is lean, and the operations simplified, there is a final step that pieces together then entire puzzle to make it truly agile. And this is orchestration, the connecting glue that synchronizes all the IT solutions to work as one harmonious whole. Therefore, in the 21st Century Enterprise model where a network of vendors, suppliers and partners come together to create a unified value chain for end-to-end quality service delivery to the end customer, strong network orchestration is required. This includes Service Integration to bring together the multiple players on a value chain to deliver as a cohesive business facing unity, and Service Management to ensure a well synchronized service life cycle, thereby building a comprehensive and exceptional experience through a unified value chain of service providers. The 21 st Century Enterprise extends beyond its boundaries to create customer experiences across various value chains that deliver the eventual product or service to the end-user. Imagine a scenario where the best of external and internal services can be easily procured and integrated to create seamless and differentiating experiences for end users. Imagine if business could orchestrate unique experiences across multiple dimensions by the push of a button. That is what the combined power of autonomics and orchestration does. It creates a scenario where IT can drive business outcomes by keeping complexity and costs at check; procuring and integrating apps, services and micro-services from internal and external sources; enabling multi-vendor process harmony by aligning individual SLAs into iusiness SLAs; providing true business agility and outcome-orientation; and synchronizing all the touch-points to help achieve business outcomes by rapidly crafting a truly unified experience for end users. MAKING AUTOMATION WORK WITH A PRAGMATIC APPROACH Now that we have elaborated on autonomics, this new and improved avatar of automation that has the power to meet the challenges of the digital age, we must throw in a caveat. It is important to note that automation is no knee-jerk reaction. As autonomics entails complex advanced machine learning and AI technology, not all IT & Operations (IT&O) environments are ready for them or even need them. It must necessarily be an evolutionary process to actually work towards improving customer experience, driving down costs across the entire operations landscape, improving efficiencies and enabling agility. Besides, in an enterprise environment, standardization is still a distant dream. Therefore, trying to apply futuristic technologies, such as cognitive computing, predictive analytics, deep search, natural language processing, etc. without having the right foundation will lead to ambiguity and gradual failure. There is only one way to make automation work right. And that is through a pragmatic and pro-human journey. 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 6

7 AUTOMATION MATURITY IS TIED TO ORGANIZATIONAL MATURITY For automation to be sustainable and progressive for all the stakeholders involved, it must be adopted in phases, based on the maturity of the prevalent IT estate within the enterprise. The fact of the matter is that most mid-sized and large organizations which have been around for more than ten years will have a varied mix of IT infrastructure and application technologies. A pragmatic, pro-human approach to automation would require a deep assessment and a thorough mapping of these technologies before even attempting to apply automation levers. Indeed, this assessment will also serve as a critical guide to Enterprise Architects, to choose the right kinds of automation technologies and build an automation roadmap that ensures business and human-resource goals are met in a realistic fashion. For instance, in a typical IT scenario, the automation technologies used and goals expected to streamline support of a cloud-based digital application will be markedly more mature and modern than those dealing with making mainframe server management more effective. The moment you take a methodical and analytical approach to applying autonomics, you can start looking beyond the hype and apprehension and start looking at real, repeatable and consistent outcomes. Your technology and human resource investment roadmap becomes clearer, not only for automation, but also for larger IT modernization drives. And most importantly, automation can actually deliver on its promise by powering a 21st Century Enterprise that is focused on delivering unified customer experiences and superior business outcomes. PRAGMATIC AUTOMATION IN ACTION A WAVE BASED APPROACH At HCL, we recommend a pragmatic approach in waves, by implementing automation, autonomics and orchestration levers that first focus on elevating IT process maturity, implementing lower level automation levers and then introducing higher order autonomics-driven automation. The first wave, usually lasting the first six months, comprises improvement of process maturity and applying a monitoring layer to collect data and trends from various sources. The second wave over the next six months consists of studying analytical and lean IT output, identifying repeatable, high volume and high complexity tasks, and thereby applying more advanced components. The third and final wave applies cognitive and machine learning to create a multiplier effect on levers applied in the earlier two waves. This wave also entails enabling the DevOps culture where applicable to sharpen a focus on business outcomes through simplification and business agility. Simultaneously, this approach requires investing in developing process definition and automation skills; establishing a process documentation culture to document standard and repetitive processes; proactively countering cultural resistance with specific and measurable objectives supported by incentive and recognition programs; establishing clear standards mandating a process discipline; and finally, prioritizing areas of greatest operational value: efficiency, cost reduction, risk mitigation and predictability. 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 7

8 This approach ensures that each wave enables strong fundamental baselines and thereby continuous improvement of the autonomics lifecycle. MATURITY LAYERS OF AUTONOMICS The wave-based approach leads to sustainable layers of autonomics that are supported by advanced machine learning, analytics and artificial intelligence engines which continuously study data to derive insights that are used by downstream automation modules. Typically, the structure is built on the following layers: Assisted and Robotic Process Automation Layer: Enabling humans to accomplish higher order tasks faster and with higher rate of success. Self-Service Layer: Empowering end-users to solve known issues through self-help systems. Self-Heal Layer: Enabling IT systems to detect incidents and take corrective action without human intervention. Preventive Layer: Leveraging predictive analytics and AI to detect potential issues before they happen and enabling preventive action. Finally, visual dashboards provide IT and business users with real time trends, information and analytics, and also provide them one-click access to most automation levers. ZONE BASED SELECTION OF AUTOMATION LEVERS IT Maturity Digital / Next Gen Zone A Zone B Zone C Modern / Web Legacy ACTIVE PROACTIVE DYNAMIC/ PREDICTIVE Automation Maturity Figure 3. A zone-based approach to automation In order to focus on effectiveness rather than cost, and ensure the best business outcomes through autonomics, the selection of automation levers must be customised to each zone in the organizational architecture, based on its specific level of maturity. For instance, after studying the IT landscape, the automation levers that should be applied in a zone that comprises legacy apps and physical infrastructure could potentially include event automation, basic runbook automation and expert assist systems. The automation levers suitable in a zone that includes modern, web apps and virtualised infrastructure on a private cloud, could be virtualization management, selfservice systems and analytics. And finally the zone that has digital applications, hybrid 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 8

9 cloud and software-defined networking and infrastructure would be best suited for dynamic and predictive automation, including self-healing systems, machine learning & AI-driven robotic process automation, and advanced capacity management. This zone based selection ensures that the highest level of automation is applied to the most modernized zone of enterprise IT to maximize benefit. AUTONOMICS AND ORCHESTRATION IN PRACTICE DRYiCE is HCL s Autonomics and Orchestration platform which incorporates the pragmatic approach to automation and divides the IT estate into zones, understanding technology maturity, complexities and inter-dependencies and creating a pragmatic roadmap to implement automation levers that are just right. Leveraging more than a decade of experience push the envelope on what IT can achieve through automation and orchestration, DRYiCE modules are designed to solve real world challenges, with interfaces and experiences that make sense to IT practitioners and business leaders alike. CONCLUSION: AUTONOMICS AND ORCHESTRATION POWER THE 21ST CENTURY ENTERPRISE The topic of automation is as broad as it is deep. The objective of this whitepaper was to introduce to the reader some key automation related concepts and take them through a journey into the evolution of automation. If you, like many potential readers of this whitepaper, are involved in defining or executing your organization s automation strategy then you need to take a cold hard look into the larger impact that exponential technologies such as AI, machine learning, deep learning, robotics and others will have on your enterprise IT strategy. It will only be through a conscious and concerted effort to embrace these technologies and an approach steeped in pragmatism that will enable IT leaders and strategists realize the true potential of automation. 2016, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 9

10 ABOUT HCL About HCL Technologies HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its emergence on the global landscape, and after its IPO in 1999, HCL has focused on transformational outsourcing, underlined by innovation and value creation, offering an integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and business services. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 31 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare & Life sciences. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of Employees First, Customers Second which empowers its 106,107 transformers to create real value for customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 6 billion, for the Financial Year ended as on 30th June 2015 (on LTM basis). For more information, please visit About HCL Enterprise HCL is a $6.9 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two companies listed in India HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India s original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of over 110,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 505 points of presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading global 1000 firms, including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit Hello there! I am an Ideapreneur. I believe that sustainable business outcomes are driven by relationships nurtured through values like trust, transparency and flexibility. I respect the contract, but believe in going beyond through collaboration, applied innovation and new generation partnership models that put your interest above everything else. Right now 110,000 Ideapreneurs are in a Relationship Beyond the Contract with 500 customers in 31 countries. How can I help you?