IT automation and AI IN IT tools

IT automation is the use of instructions to create a repeated process that replaces an IT professional's manual work in data centers and cloud deployments. Software tools, frameworks and appliances conduct the tasks with minimum administrator intervention. The scope of IT automation ranges from single actions to discrete sequences and, ultimately, to an autonomous IT deployment that takes actions based on user behavior and other event triggers.

IT automation is different from orchestration, but commonly, the terms are used together. Automation accomplishes a task repeatedly without human intervention. Orchestration is a broader concept wherein the user coordinates automated tasks into a cohesive process or workflow for IT and the business. For example, an IT administrator enables workload scaling with automated instance creation, operating system (OS) installs and storage provisioning. They orchestrate the automation tasks in a workflow with a specific order of operations for each task. Orchestration can also include permissions and roles enforcement, approval gates and more.

How IT automation affects processes

IT automation relies on software tools to define and conduct a prescribed series of detailed actions that are invoked manually or by an external trigger, such as a change in IT capacity demand.

IT automation replaces a series of actions and responses between an administrator and the IT environment. For example, an IT automation platform, such as Microsoft Windows PowerShell, combines cmdlets, variables and other components into a script to mimic the series of commands and steps that an administrator would invoke one line at a time through the command-line interface (CLI) to provision a virtual machine (VM) or implement a backup process. A more complex IT automation outcome can be achieved by combining multiple scripts into a series. These limited-scope automation processes are most beneficial when they replace a task that an administrator has to perform frequently. Admins do not save much, if any, time by automating a rote action made once per month. Automating a rote action that occurs multiple times a day, however, significantly increases an administrator's  time for other tasks that require decision-making and assessment skills.