Move fast and break things. It was the motto that Facebook adhered to as it grew from a Harvard dorm to the multinational conglomerate that it is today. Why was the speed of particular interest? Because every organisation recognises the value of rapid application development and faster time-to-market. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the perfect illustration for this. One pivotal reason for its dominance in cloud computing is that it is the pioneer.

Manually handling tasks that can be automated will leave you lagging behind your competitors. One notable part of this is server automation. Automating your server will put you one step further towards a fast-paced future of innovation and digital transformation. Aside from that, it substantially reduces the duration of digital enablement projects.

In this article, I’ll take you through how server automation helps your digital enablement projects.

The Need For Server Automation

In a world with increasing reliance on remote work, manually managing servers can be a tedious and lengthy task. This is what makes server automation a necessity for any business.

Server automation is the process of automating and managing different tasks and processes, such as application development, build management, deployment, patching, security and compliance, operating system configuration, and storage management across physical and virtual environments.

Sadly, many IT departments are yet to adopt server automation despite its tremendous benefits and potential.

Organisations need to understand that it’s no longer feasible to have a three-to-four-week gap between code completion and code in production. The average consumer expects new features and updates weekly or monthly, making the manual process quite challenging.

Businesses need to move away from the manual approach of deploying software and managing servers to an automated process. By automating big or small tasks, IT departments can effectively streamline their processes, improve deployment speeds, decrease downtime and human errors, and free up employees’ time for more productive activities.

The Age Of Digital Enablement

It’s a new age, and remote work is in demand. Cloud usage is on the rise, and rapid application development practices like DevOps and agile are favored. Companies are increasingly looking at strategies and projects to build better products and services. Digital enablement is essential to building agility for the future.

Digital enablement approaches are a way to manage the changes, communications, and training needed to build new and better digital services.

Digital enablement projects can help balance operational knowledge and best practices, as more and more organisations become global and decentralised. Companies need to innovate and deliver new features to compete. What better way to do that than to improve your infrastructure through all the features of server automation?

Let’s take a look at how server automation aids digital enablement projects.

Empower Consumers

Delivery is a significant factor for many consumers these days. Customers are looking for reliable, consistent, helpful services. It doesn’t matter whether users are dealing with sales reps or chatbots; speed and efficiency are among the top expectations for consumers.

Server automation is essential to making your business more competitive when meeting customer demand. In light of these changing expectations, server automation can be handy in implementing a digital way of working.

With digital enablement projects in place, companies can consistently surpass customer expectations.

Accelerate Application Deployment

In an HP Server automation report, 48% of users cut execution and delivery time in half with server automation. Running builds and deploying to production after code completion can be challenging, especially when you have to make updates often. You should implement continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices to automatically build and deliver applications with zero need for manual involvement.

Recent studies continue to underscore the benefits of IT automation. According to a recent article on TechTarget, adopting IT automation leads to improved process efficiency, greater scalability, reduced costs, and enhanced capabilities through artificial intelligence.

Furthermore, as per Business Wire, advancements in software-defined automation (SDA) are transforming industrial processes. SDA enables the use of digital twin models, allowing manufacturers to design, optimise, test, and validate machine solutions in virtual environments before real-world implementation. This approach can reduce errors, save time and money, and accelerate time-to-market by up to 50%, with commissioning times reduced by up to 60% compared to traditional methods.

In addition to these, writing build and deployment scripts every time there’s an update leads to errors and a lack of consistency. That’s why 48% of organisations report errors in manual processes, while another 65% admit to a lack of consistency and standardisation.

Reduce Duration Of Digital Enablement Projects

Enterprises span several sectors, numerous products, and multiple cloud environments. Building digital enablement projects can seem daunting. To initiate it, the entire software life cycle process has to be digitally transformed. It should be based on automation.

With server automation, you can align all your applications under a single solution, thereby negating each server’s need to handle each server separately. This simply means you can speed up server builds, run automated tests, ensure security and compliance and receive instant feedback on every task and procedure.

In addition to these, developers also get access to auto-generated documents and log files. As a result, you can transform your entire operations and agility and provide more time for developers to build better products.

Enhance Security And Compliance

Let’s say you built a new feature for your application and manually pushed it to production. No issues, right? Wrong. If your application encounters any issues after deployment, your users may likely have a bad experience and detect it before you do. That’s never a good thing.

That is why several companies state that security and compliance were primary considerations when choosing automation software. Server automation can help your business in areas such as security, compliance, and governance.

A server automation solution can easily identify vulnerabilities across your entire network and fix them automatically. It can help you identify threats and proactively manage vulnerabilities before a breach occurs for infrastructure, development, and production environments.

With AttuneOps, you can simplify compliance procedures. An organisation can spot violations of its security policies, user accounts, and configurations, among other things. It is especially useful for companies that have to adhere to high standards with sensitive user information.

Server Build Automation Capabilities

As it is, developers are already under a tremendous amount of pressure delivering products in the shortest time possible. Including manual builds in these processes will surely add to the burden. Now consider the fact that it’ll take days to complete a build on some applications. And that’s not all. What if the code fails to build successfully? You’ll have to start all over again.

This is a problem that most software vendors face in delivering full server builds to their clients. With AttuneOps, they can easily automate builds and provide better experiences to their clients.

Drive Digital Enablement With AttuneOps Server Automation Solution

It is unlikely that your business will survive in a truly digital world if you still adhere to outdated principles and concepts. Rather than simply focusing on product quality and pricing, businesses that aim to achieve digital enablement need to focus on delivering better customer service and responding faster to market trends. The best way to deliver digital enablement projects is through automation.

AttuneOps is a server automation solution that can help you transform your business through server provisioning, cross-platform server automation, build automation, security and compliance, document and log file generation, patching, and auditing. Some of its key benefits include reduced cost, reduced deployment time, and better security.

Get started with a demo of AttuneOps.

Digital Enablement Projects : Frequently Asked Questions