Data-Driven IT Automation: A Vision for the Modern CIO

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Data-Driven IT Automation:
A Vision for the Modern CIO
Dennis Drogseth
Vice President
Enterprise Management Associates
Dan Twing
President and COO
Enterprise Management Associates

Watch the On-Demand Webinar
Slide 2
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Featured Speakers
Slide 3 © 2020 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
Dennis Nils Drogseth, Vice President, EMA
Dennis joined Enterprise Management Associates in 1998 and brings several years of
experience in various aspects of marketing and business planning for service
management solutions. He supports EMA through leadership in IT service
management (ITSM), CMDB systems, and megatrends like advanced operations
analytics, cross-domain automation systems, IT-to-business alignment, and service-
centric financial optimization.
Dan Twing, President and COO, EMA
Dan is responsible for developing and executing strategic market research, delivering
value to IT organizations through consulting engagements, and directing product
developments and marketing efforts. Dan joined EMA in 2005 and has over 25 years of
experience in information systems, software development, and technology outsourcing.
Dan focuses on all aspects of intelligent and automated management of IT.

Sponsors

Agenda
• Demographics
• Initial strategic findings
• Use case cross-analysis
• Unifying automation more strategically
• Maturity-related highlights
• Summing up: the path to success

Demographics

A global survey with 405 respondents
In which region are you located?
Sample Size = 405
49%
26%24%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
North AmericaEMEAAsia

Size and industry verticals
• Company size was evenly divided between small, medium, and large
• 36% between 500 and 2,499 employees
• 35% between 2,500 and 9,999 employees
• 30% with 10,000 or more employees
• The five leading industry verticals were:
• High-technology software provider
• High-technology service provider
• Manufacturing
• Finance, banking, insurance
• Retail/wholesale distribution

Executive was the leading role, in keeping with the
strategic focus of the research
Which of the following best describes the active role you play in your company's
automation initiatives?
Sample Size = 405
34%
27%
2%
17%
11%
8%
2%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
IT executive oversight (director and above)
Manager-level oversight
Other oversight
Automation planning/strategy/assessment
Hands-on administration and support
Architecture and planning
Active ongoing stakeholder/user

Initial Strategic Findings

Overall, an average of 40% of processes were automated:
50% after disqualifiers were removed
To what degree do you estimate you have implemented IT automation in your
organization?
Sample Size = 495
Percentage of Tasks Automated
7%
11%
12%
14%
12%
15%
14%
8%
4%
3%
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
18%
Less than
10%
10-20% 21-30% 31-40% 41-50% 51-60% 61-70% 71-80% 81-90% 91-100%
Those less than
21% automated
were terminated
from the
remainder of the
survey.

Leading obstacles for those with fewer than 21% of
their processes automated
1. Product complexity
2. Lack of human/financial resources to support integration
3. Too much customization required
4. Resistance to change
5. Lack of integration between analytics and automation (tied with)
6. Lack of executive support
7. Lack of integration between automation and monitoring tools
8. Lack of overarching automation strategy and architecture
9. Organizational conflicts within IT
10. No clear use case

90% viewed coupling AI/analytics with automation as a “high”
or “extremely high” priority
To what degree is combining automation with AI/analytics a priority in your
organization for 2020? Automation integration with AI/analytics is a/an…
Sample Size = 405
36%
54%
9%
1%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Extremely high priorityHigh prioritySecond-tier priorityNot a priority

75% said that AIOps/IT analytics were “a major initiative” or
“actively underway”
• 33% said that AIOps/AIA was currently a
major initiative
• 42% indicated that AIOps/AIA was actively
underway
• 15% indicated that they were currently
evaluating AIOps/AIA
• 7% said that AIOps/AIA was planned for the
future
• Only 4% had no plans in this area

AIOps/IT analytics in deployment correlated strongly with more
progressive levels of automation
To what degree is AIOps, IT operations analytics, or some form of advanced IT analytics
(AIA) part of your environment?
by
To what degree do you estimate you have implemented IT automation in your
organization?
Sample Size = 405
21%
46%
33%
32%
43%
24%
54%
32%
14%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
A major initiative
Actively in progress
All others
21-40% tasks automated 41-70% tasks automated More than 70% tasks automated

Other correlations in the AI/analytics/automation handshake
• Improved use case success rates
• Higher level of automation integration across use
cases
• More stakeholders engaged and supported through
automation
• Higher levels of IT automation maturity
• More likely to have an automation center of excellence
• More likely to have digital transformation drive
automation
• More likely to have analytics drive automation
prescriptively

The four use cases as charted for “delivering value”
—only a 4% delta
Of the areas listed, which one do you feel is furthest along in delivering value?
Sample Size = 405
27%
26%
23%23%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
Configuration, change, and
capacity management
automation
Application performance
and workload optimization
Problem, incident, and
availability management
automation
DevOps automation

Use case respondents in perspective
• Application performance and workload optimization: 205 respondents
• Configuration, change, and capacity management: 188 respondents
• Problem, incident, and change management: 157 respondents
• But this area led for where respondents were “also actively involved”
• DevOps: 135 respondents
• More than half of the respondents felt they led in two versus just one
use case
• Many indicated active involvement in three or more

Use Case Correlations and Highlights

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTINGSlide 20 © 2020 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
Sample Size = 405
Use case overlap in terms of respondents
Sample Size = 405
Incident
63
Only
Change
30
DevOps
35
AppWLO
60
CHANGE USE CASE
188N
Incident
11
Change
35
Only
DevOps
29
AppWLO
60
DEVOPS USE CASE
135N
Incident
54
Change
60
DevOps
60
Only
AppWLO
34
APPWLO USE CASE
208N
Only
Incident
29
Change
63
DevOps
11
AppWLO
54
INCIDENT USE CASE
157N

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING© 2020 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
Primary group responsible for automation
Top 6 responses
34%
18%
8%
7%
6%
4%
4%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
IT operations
IT executive suite (VP or CIO-…
Defined incident management…
ITSM teams, including service…
Security, fraud, risk…
Chief Digital Officer
DevOps-driven team
Incident
21%
16%
15%
11%
8%
6%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
IT operations
IT service management…
IT executive suite (VP or…
IT infrastructure team
Chief Digital Officer
Defined change…
Change
35%
29%
9%
7%
5%
4%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
IT operations
IT executive suite (VP or CIO-…
ITSM team
Cloud
Applications development…
Central applications…
DevOps
48%
41%
36%
27%
26%
22%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
IT operations
IT service management…
IT executive suite (VP or…
Application management…
DevOps-driven team
Engineering/development
AppWLO
IT operations led in strategic oversight/“driving” for
all four use cases
Slide 21

Other stakeholder/role perceptions
• IT operations also led for the most critical stakeholder group served
• With the exception of ITSM for DevOps
• Purchasing was driven by the IT executive suite
• Very closely followed by IT operations
• The most needed unserved group was made up of non-IT business
stakeholders
• Except for DevOps, in which it was application development teams
affiliated with the lines of business

Top three in terms of relevance and usage
Top 8 responses
27%
22%
20%
18%
18%
17%
16%
15%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Workflow within and across IT
Security-related process…
Workload automation
Automated root cause analysis
Automation in support of…
Automation to capture user…
Integrated trouble ticketing
Alert-driven notification
Incident
28%
23%
20%
18%
16%
14%
14%
14%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Workflows within and across IT
Capacity…
Automation to capture user…
Workflows combined with social…
Dynamic resource capacity and…
End-to-end automated…
Automated inventory and…
Automated application…
Change
25%
21%
20%
20%
17%
15%
15%
14%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%
Workload automation
Automation for pre-…
Automation for cloud-specific…
Integrated automation in…
Security instrumentation…
DevOps
31%
26%
18%
17%
14%
14%
13%
13%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Workload automation
Automation in support of data…
Workflow combined with social IT
Comparative performance…
Dynamic resource allocation…
Automated testing and…
Autoscaling capacity optimization
AppWLO
Workflow within and across IT led overall in IT automation
technologies for relevance and usage
Slide 23

Automation priorities for unifying automation across use cases
• What would you look for in an automation
technology/toolset to unify automation
across use cases?
• Problem, incident, and availability = easy
integration with AIOps/advanced analytics
• Configuration, change, and capacity
management = scalability
• DevOps = easy integration with
AIOps/advanced analytics
• Application performance and workload
optimization = price

Technologies targeted for integration
Top 8 responses
43%
39%
39%
39%
38%
37%
32%
31%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Security-related tools
Monitoring tools (application…
Incident management…
Collaboration tools
Knowledge management
Cloud-related management tools
Monitoring tools (network…
Endpoint management solutions
Incident
51%
38%
34%
32%
30%
30%
29%
28%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
IT asset management tools
Cloud performance-related…
Knowledge management
Monitoring tools (infrastructure…
Virtualization or container…
Change
37%
33%
33%
33%
30%
30%
30%
25%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
CI/CD tools
Cloud cost-specific management…
End-user experience…
User acceptance testing analytics
DevOps
45%
35%
33%
31%
30%
30%
28%
28%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
IT asset management tools
Monitoring tools (infrastructure)
Cloud cost-specific…
AppWLO
Technologies targeted for integration reflected use case priorities,
with security-related and asset management tools leading
Slide 25

65%
50%
46%
45%
45%
23%
18%
3%
38%
13%
13%
18%
16%
1%
2%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Incident response analytics
Analytics specific to business…
Big data (data lake)
AIOps
Governance-related analytics
Natural language processing
AI bots
None of the above
Incident
Analytics integrated vs. most critical
Top 8 responses
44%
40%
39%
39%
37%
37%
35%
31%
14%
15%
17%
10%
12%
9%
7%
5%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
AIOps
Cloud migration cost analytics
Capacity management analytics
Impact analysis to determine…
Change
51%
51%
49%
48%
41%
38%
34%
28%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
AIOps
Cloud migration cost analytics
End-user/customer experience…
Capacity planning/optimization…
DevOps
42%
38%
38%
35%
34%
32%
30%
30%
12%
13%
17%
16%
7%
4%
6%
2%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
AIOps
End-user/customer experience…
Business activity monitoring
Capacity planning/optimization…
Asset management-related analytics
AppWLO
Incident response, analytics specific to business performance and
AIOps led overall for IT analytic priorities
Slide 26

Top benefits achieved per use case
• Problem, incident, and availability management – IT cost savings
• Change, configuration, and capacity management – IT cost savings
• DevOps – IT cost savings
• Application performance and workload optimization – Increased IT
personnel productivity
• Unifying automation across use cases – Increased level of
innovation across IT, a more unified way of working across IT

Technical metrics used (or planned for use) for automation investments
Top 8 responses
44%
42%
40%
38%
38%
38%
37%
34%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Reduction in events/incidents
Reduction in the number of…
Cost reduction per incident
Mean time to diagnose major…
Reduction in downtime
End-user experience…
Mean time to repair/restore…
Reduction in service desk…
Incident
43%
34%
33%
32%
32%
30%
28%
27%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
DevOps-related metrics
Cloud migration/optimization - cost
Security/compliance-related…
Asset management impacts
Cloud migration/optimization -…
IoT-related impacts
Mean time for planned changes
Change
41%
34%
33%
33%
32%
32%
30%
28%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Time to deliver new applications
Response time per application
Acceleration in the number of…
Level of security, risk, data…
Availability
Response time per transaction
Time to deliver application…
Outages/incidents caused by…
DevOps
33%
33%
32%
30%
29%
28%
28%
27%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Cloud migration/optimization-…
Security/compliance-related…
Cloud migration/optimization-…
IoT-related impacts
Reduction in service desk…
Reduction in the number of…
Mean time to repair/restore…
AppWLO
Technical metrics varied by use case, with reduction in downtime
taking a prominent role

Business impact metrics viewed as important regarding automation investments
Top 8 responses
46%
39%
36%
35%
35%
34%
34%
31%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Improved external customer satisfaction
Improved internal user/consumer satisfaction
Business process efficiency/impacts
Improved business efficiencies due to reduced…
Improved service desk agent satisfaction
Revenue (through IT services)
Business activity metrics (BAM)
Internal service-level agreement (SLA)…
Incident
46%
43%
39%
37%
34%
34%
30%
28%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Overall IT financial optimization-related…
Improved internal user/consumer…
Improved business efficiencies due to…
Compliance metrics (e.g., PCI)
Operations OpEx cost savings reduction…
Internal service-level agreement (SLA)…
Change
41%
41%
36%
36%
34%
34%
33%
30%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Faster time to innovation in…
OpEx efficiencies (cost savings)
CapEx efficiencies (cost savings)
DevOps
36%
35%
35%
33%
29%
29%
28%
28%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Overall IT financial optimization-related…
Improved external customer experience
OpEx cost savings-reduction (MTTR)
Cost-related external SLAs (with service…
AppWLO
Business metrics overall prioritized customer or
internal user satisfaction

Top purchasing priorities
• Problem, incident, and availability management – Scalability
• Change, configuration, and capacity management – Usability
• DevOps – Scalability
• Application performance and workload optimization – Scalability
• Unifying automation across use cases based on prevalence –
Usability
 Based on criticality, it was price and ease of integration with
AIOps/IT analytics

Three major obstacles in deploying or supporting automation requirements
Top 8 responses
22%
19%
17%
16%
16%
15%
15%
15%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Product costs and complexity
Resistance to change
Organizational conflicts within IT
Deployment complexity
Lack of automation strategy and…
Lack of integration across automation…
Lack of integration - analytic resources…
Insufficient headcount
Incident
23%
16%
16%
16%
15%
15%
15%
14%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Too much customization required
Training the ML/AI capabilities to…
Keeping automation levels current…
Deployment complexity
Lack of effective skillsets
Change
38%
36%
30%
30%
29%
28%
26%
23%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Analytics tools
Cloud tools
Collaboration tools
Database tools
Security tools
Workflow tools
Testing tools
Network and systems monitoring tools
DevOps
19%
18%
17%
16%
15%
14%
14%
13%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
Training the ML/AI capabilities to…
Legal and regulatory requirements
Lack of integration - analytic resources…
Keeping automation levels current and…
Low level of trust/confidence in…
AppWLO
Product costs and complexity led across use cases as a
primary obstacle for automation
Slide 31

Top recommendations for going forward
• Problem, incident, and availability = optimize processes before you
automate them
• Configuration, change, and capacity management = optimize
processes before you automate them
• DevOps = optimize processes before you automate them
• Application performance and workload optimization = make sure
you have adequate skillsets

Unifying Automation
More Strategically

Where respondents were in unifying automation across
use cases…
• 23% said that unifying automation investments across use cases
was well underway
• 41% said that unifying automation investments has become a
priority
• 28% indicated that strategic automation unification was under
discussion
• 6% were just beginning to consider unification as a priority
• Only 1% said that their focus for automation was purely on a use
case basis

IT process automation was the top priority for unifying
automation across use cases
Which automation technologies are leading the charge in support of your unified
automation initiative?
74%
68%
36%
30%
23%
46%
27%
10%11%
6%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
IT process
automation or
runbook
Workflow within
and across IT
Workload
automation (WLA)
AI botsRPA orchestration
Leading critical
Sample Size = 377, Valid Cases = 377, Total Mentions = 867

IT analytics/AIOps led as the favored platform
Which platform technologies are leading the charge in support of your unified
automation initiative?
47%
35%
30%
28%
26%
19%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
IT analytics/AIOps
ITSM (IT service management)
IT operations management suites
IT analytics (other)
A dedicated automation platform
DevOps platforms
Sample Size = 377, Valid Cases = 377, Total Mentions = 697

Top drivers for unifying automation across use cases
1. Improving IT-to-business alignment
2. Improving overall efficiencies in automation
performance
3. Cutting costs by having superior automation
integrations
4. Unifying IT to operate more effectively as a
whole
5. Creating a centralized automation center of
excellence

Top drivers for unifying automation across use cases -2-
6. Reducing administrative overhead for
automation
7. Need to reduce complexity in the automation
ecosystem
8. Cutting costs through superior OpEx
efficiencies
9. IT executive pressure
10.The need for improved governance

Maturity-Related Highlights

Core factors in IT automation maturity
• Higher levels of manual process documentation
• Higher levels of automation across IT processes
• More stakeholders supported by automation
• Higher levels of executive oversight involvement
• A more active interest in best practices
• An IT maturity center of excellence
• More progressed levels of AIOps/IT analytics deployments
• More progressed levels of AIOps/IT analytics integrations

Where respondents were in documenting manual processes
• 18% of respondents had documented fewer than 30% of their
manual processes
• 25% had documented between 30% and 50% of their manual
processes
• 23% had documented between 50% and 70% of their manual
processes
• 25% had documented more than 70% of their manual processes

Agile/Scrum tied regulatory compliance for the most relevant
best practice
Which best practices are the most relevant for IT automation initiatives?
10%
10%
9%
9%
7%
7%
7%
7%
6%
5%
5%
4%
3%
3%
2%
2%
1%
1%
1%
1%
0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12%
Agile/Scrum
Regulatory Compliance (SOX, FISMA, HIPAA, etc.)
ISO Security 27001/27002
Service Integration and Management
Six Sigma
CMMI - Capability Maturity Model Integration
COBIT - Control Objectives for Information and…
Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS)
Continuous Operations
ITIL4
IT Balanced Scorecard
ITIL v2, v3
PRINCE2 or IPMA (for Project Management)
TOGAF - The Open Group Architecture Framework
CSI Benchmarks for AWS
NIST SP800 series
IT4IT
ISO 19770-1
Other ISO Security 27xxx
FFIEC
Sample Size = 381

Digital transformation was also key
• 29% said that digital transformation was driving their automation
initiative
• Which consistently correlated with higher levels of maturity and success
• 46% said that digital transformation and automation were tightly
coupled
• 18% said that digital transformation and automation were related,
but not yet tightly coupled
• 8% had no plans to integrate the two
• Often sacrificing more strategic and effective approaches to IT
automation

An automation center of excellence helped to promote more
effective unification of automation across use cases
To what degree are you seeking to unify automation investments across use cases?
By
Do you currently have an automation center of excellence or an equivalent organization
overseeing automation strategies across IT?
36%
43%
16%
3%
0%
9%
43%
41%
6%
1%
15%
28%
37%
13%
7%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Extremely: Unifying automation investments across
use cases is well underway
Significantly: Unifying automation investments
across use cases has become a priority
Meaningfully: Unifying automation investments
across use cases is actively in discussion
Somewhat: Unifying automation investments
across use cases is something we are beginning to
consider
Not at all: We focus our automation investments
exclusively based on use case
Yes No, but planned No, not planned
Sample Size = 405

What AI/analytics can do…
• Drive automation directly through prescriptive
insights
• Provide immediate guidance for human
oversight to activate automation
• Provide predictive, observable patterns for
human beings to activate automation
• Provide historical trending in patterns that can
help IT react more effectively to changes and
problem areas

The move to prescriptive analytics driving automation was a
maturity exclamation point!
To what degree does your organization enable automated actions to be taken based on
AI/analytics recommendations?
27%
46%
19%
6%
2%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Automated actions are driven directly from
prescriptive analytics with the option of human
override
Automated actions are enabled by human oversight,
looking at prescriptive recommendations
Automated actions are enabled with human
oversight on observable patterns
We don't allow AI to drive automated actions except
for proven routines, such as batch processing
Automation is currently not coupled with AI/analytics
tools or platforms
Sample Size = 405

Summing Up: The Path to Success

EMA’s 10 steps for enabling more effective and efficient
IT automation
1. Document and optimize your manual processes first.
2. Pay attention to best practices.
3. Prioritize based on use case and need.
4. Establish an automation center of excellence.
5. Establish both technical and business metrics to assess your
progress, in terms of present and future objectives.
6. Invest in technologies based on a solid evaluation and what’s
most relevant to you at each stage as you evolve.

EMA’s 10 steps -2-
7. Understand who your stakeholders are in your current
environment and who they might need to be going forward.
8. Seek IT executive involvement, if it’s not already there, as IT
executive leadership is critical in promoting more transformative
ways of working.
9. Socialize and communicate as you evolve, each step of the way.
10. Integrate your automation investments with AIOps and other
analytics as you evolve from leveraging analytics as a reference
point to actually having analytics drive your automated processes
prescriptively.

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Data-Driven IT Automation: A Vision for the Modern CIO

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