It service automation microland

ThisresearchreportisintendedtodemonstrateexamplesofbestpracticeswithintheITinfrastructureservicesmarket.EverestGroupandtheenterprises
discussed in this report do not in any way intend to endorse specific service providers, by way of the case examples cited in this report.
IT Infrastructure ServiceAutomation
This report has been licensed for exclusive use and distribution by Microland
ALifelinefortheContemporaryCIO ChirajeetSengupta,VicePresident
Sivaram S, SeniorAnalyst
Copyright©2014,EverestGlobal,Inc.Allrightsreserved.
2014 AN EVEREST GROUP REPORT

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Executive Summary
There is increasing pressure on IT to be more agile and responsive to the
changing needs of business, while keeping costs under control. Most enterprise
CIOsaregrapplingwiththedualmandatesoftransformationandefficiency.
With shortening technology lifecycles, new technologies and vendors are being
rapidlyintroducedtointerfacewithlegacyenvironments.Thiscreatesadditional
CIOchallengesof drivingeffective enterprisegovernance acrossahybridIT
estate.
OurresearchsuggeststhatautomationoftheITservicelifecycleresultsin
significant improvements. Automation can help reduce costs, shorten time-to-
market, establish tighter business alignment, improve service availability, and
increase business agility.
Consequently,therearesignificantongoinginvestmentstowardsautomatingIT
services. However:
 In the absenceof a broadertransformational context,few enterprisesare
able to generate a holistic vision of IT service automation. While most CIOs
needtoprioritizeheavily,absenceofabroaderautomationstrategycan
lead to unconnected and ad-hoc initiatives that not only leave value on the
table, but create technologylock-in
 The automation story is not one of choosing the most appropriate IT
management tool or platform. The automation agenda has to be
constructedas“service-led”,ratherthan“technology-up”inordertocreate
alignment between IT and business processes. Automation strategies need
to create a framework for rapid provisioning of new business services, and
supporting changes in existing ones
 A successfulautomation initiative needs to be able to orchestrate services
acrossmultipletowersandtechnologies,andcreatemutually-aligned
economic incentives. Enterprises need to seek agnosticism and alignment
with a service-led philosophy while evaluating automation partners.
Automation strategies should ideally facilitate consumption based economic
models for end-to-end IT services without large, upfront capital investments
that create lock-in risks
This report is aimed at:
 Helpingenterprisesidentifythekeycomponentsofacomprehensive
automation strategy
 Illustrating successful examples of infrastructure service automation along
with resultant benefits
 Establishing a broad adoption sequence for IT infrastructure service
automationand highlightingunderlying success factorsforthe journey
IT INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICE AUTOMATION
res earch.e ver es tg rp.com 2
Infrastructure service automation
helps meet the fundamental
challenge of funding
transformation with flatlining
budgets.
We have observed cost savings
of 15 to 20% by the end of the
first year, with significant promise
for incremental TCO benefits
over the long run.
More importantly, a
comprehensive automation
strategy enables the CIO to align
IT cost-heads with business
priorities, and shift executive
focus away from operational
governance to business
enablement issues.

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Need for Automation: Efficiency, Transformation, and
Governance
Observed impact of
infrastructureservice
automation
Source: Everest Group
IT organizations are witnessing a need to drive seemingly conflicting mandates of
efficiencyandtransformation,characterizedbya“domorewithless”philosophy.
ThekeychallengefortheCIOistogeneratefundingforthetransformational
agenda by driving greater efficiencies without compromising service delivery
levels.
Traditionalapproachestoservicemanagementinvolvesignificantmanual
intervention in key processes. Over time, human errors accumulate and lead to
the following issues:
 Operational inefficiency: Human errors not only tend to be more numerous,
butarealsohardertoisolate,takelongertoresolveandrecurfrequently.
Over a period of time, operational performance and costs become
unpredictable,resultinginpoor end-user satisfaction.Automation notonly
helpseliminate errors,but alsoreducestime-to-resolution,and creates a
consistent service experience
 Limitingtransformation:TraditionalITmanagementapproachesareunable to
meet business requirements of rapid provisioning, release, and change
management. By enabling rapid provisioning and scalability, infrastructure
service automation can transform how businesses launch new products and
services through traditional and digital channels
 Opaquegovernance:TraditionalITmanagementmethodsseldomfocuson
mappingtechnologycomponentswithaparticularbusinessprocess.This
createslack of visibility and leads to the phenomenon of “ticket bouncing” in
multi-vendorenvironments. Further,business-ITalignmenttakesa backseat
asITcostsaredecoupledfrombusinessoutcomes.Automationinitiatives
create transparent mapping betweenITinvestments and business demand in
a multi-vendor IT estate
Mostimportantly,well-conceivedautomationstrategiescreaterapidimpact
through operational cost savings (as much as 15% to 20% to start with) that can
be used to fund a broader transformational mandate.
Benefits of infrastructure service automation
E X H I B I T 1
During the course of our
research we came across several
striking instances of enterprises
reaping rich benefits of
infrastructure service
automation:
 A Fortune 10 conglomerate
reduced the average time to
resolve IT incidents by90%
 A mobile insurance company
reduced time to on-board
new partners and customers
from two months to less than
one day
 Up to 40% reduction in
operational IT governance
costs were observed across
several enterprises
Across all such examples, we
observed CIOs using
infrastructure service automation
strategies to serve mandates of
efficiency, IT-enabled business
transformation, and enterprise
governance.
Source: Everest Group and
Microland
Observed impact of infrastructure service automation
Operational metrics Error occurrence Reduced by 40 to 50%
Time taken to conduct problem RCA Reduced by 75%
Transformation metrics Time-to-market for application stack
change
Reduced from 2 months to less than
1 day
Time-to-delivery for production plans From hours to minutes
Governance metrics Operational governance efforts Reduced by 40%
Accuracy and compliance Audit compliance increased by 70%

Key Components of Infrastructure Service Automation
With
there
thinking
isolated
Exhibit
a hybrid IT
Comprehensive automation
stack
Source: Everest Group; Microland
Service orchestration engine
The orchestrator contains a repository of workflows and process design
components.
and
and
process
The



Integrated service desk
Building an effective foundation for IT management is a critical step in the
delivery of robust IT services. An automated a
typically operates on “one touch” mechanisms that trigger the appropriate
service workflows from the orchestrator. Tickets are automatically routed, based
on skill profile and individual ticket queues, with ITIL process automatio
flexible workflow design.
E X H I B I T 2
Technology-agnostic
automation
stack
WiththeenterpriseITinfrastructureenvironmentbecoming
thereisanaccelerateddrive towardsautomation.Enterprises
thinkingoftheirautomationstrategyinaholisticmulti-tower
isolated initiatives.
Exhibit 2illustratescriticalcomponentsofacomprehensive
a hybrid IT environment.
Operations
interface
Automation
enabler set
Core IT
management
toolset
Hybrid enterprise
infrastructure
components.Theserviceorchestratorhelpsintriggeringappropriate
andindesigningnewonestocoordinateautomatedtasks
and environments. The service orchestrator becomes a repository
process knowledge and supplants the traditional Known Error
The service orchestrator provides the following benefits:
Control, visibility, and accountability: Automates entire service
including notification and escalationprocesses
Automate IT routine tasks: Eliminates labor-intensive manual interactions
and automates key processes such as system, network,
Rapidly recover from IT incidents: Integrates, orchestrates, and automates
the incident recovery processes
Integrated service desk
delivery of robust IT services. An automated and integrated service desk
on skill profile and individual ticket queues, with ITIL process automatio
flexible workflow design.
Service desk BSM framework
End-point Monitoring and
management tools event correlation
tools
Configuration
management /
discovery tools
Dedicated Private cloud
Operations
console
becomingincreasinglyhybrid,
Enterprises will need tostart
towerformat,ratherthan
comprehensiveautomationstackin
appropriateworkflows,
tasksacrossteams,tools,
repository of real-time
Error Database (KEDB).
benefits:
Automates entire servicelifecycle
intensive manual interactions
network, and application tasks
Integrates, orchestrates, and automates
nd integrated service desk
on skill profile and individual ticket queues, with ITIL process automation and
Prediction engine
Configuration
management /
discovery tools
Public cloud
End-user portals
Operational
governance
engine

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Business Service Management (BSM) framework
The BusinessServiceabstraction maps allcomponentsofa businessservice
provided by IT. A “business service” may be defined as the final consumption unit
thatisprovided byITtothe end-user”,(e.g.,enterpriseemailorSAPFICO).
Business Service Management enables IT to communicate service performance
and align with business objectives, while maintaining control over the
infrastructure.
BSM framework: Key benefits
 Visual representation of the dependencies between business processes, business
applications and the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, networks, middleware, and
databases), helps in defining incident/problem/change management priorities
resulting in reduced downtime and faster problem resolution
Source: Everest Group; Microland
Transformation
Governance
 Business-IT alignment: By mapping all IT components to individual business
services, BSM framework enable transparency of IT asset utilization, and create a
roadmap for aligning IT costs to business priorities
 Drive to preventive IT: Visibility of the underlying infrastructure, and its
correspondence to business services, provides the foundation for adoption of
predictive engines based on system heuristics, as opposed to reactive agent-
based approaches
 Operational governance: Business service views can be customized and
enabled for business users, giving them an improved line of sight into IT
infrastructure performance
 Contract governance: Service levels are created for uptime of the final “business
service” rather than the individual IT components. This is critical for multi-vendor
governance and improved end-user experience
Prediction Engine (PE)
Self-learningpredictionengineswithmachinelearningintelligencerecognizeboth
normal and abnormal machine behavior. Using highly advanced pattern
recognition algorithms, PE identifies potential issues across infrastructure
components(storage,servers,networks,middleware,ordatabases).Thishelpsin:
 Reduction in L1 incidents by as much as 80%
 Release of significant amounts of human and computing resources by
eliminatingfalsealarms;forinstance,byestablishingpredictiveservercapacity
thresholds,PEcaneliminatefalsealarmsofcapacityoverflow,andrelease
systemcapacityformoreeffectiveutilization.Ourestimatessuggestthat
enterprisescanreleaseupto20to30%ofsystemcapacityandhumanefforts
using PE
Operational governance engine
Intuitive dashboardsand flexible reporting ensure that CIOs, IT staff,and auditors
can gain complete visibility into regulatory compliance and IT performance. Data
from multiple IT feeder tools (data repositories) can provide a unique view into IT
performance and can answer questionslike:
 “Do issues increase on Mondays following a holiday?”
 “Is an application over/under-engineered to the detriment of its uptime?”
 “What is the impact of Service Level 1 on Service Level 2?”
 “Whatismynetexpected Service Levelfortherestofthe month,postamajor
incident to be compliant?”
Operational
efficiency
E X H I B I T 3

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Case Study 1: Automating for Efficiency
Automationof the governancemechanismhelps measureandmanageIT
compliance as an ongoing program through intuitive reporting mechanisms,
enables audit compliance, and helps drive continuous service improvement
programs.
The enterprise
The enterpriseisanAmerican multi-nationalconglomerate, providingsolutions
in energy, technology infrastructure, capital finance, health, home,
transportation, consumer and industrial manufacturing, across 100 countries
with over 300,000 employees.
Business & IT challenges
The scale of this enterprise creates several challenges. The scope of its IT
environment encompasses close to 0.5 million mailboxes and tens of thousands
ofports,anddevices.Theserverenvironmentrequiresseveralthousand“builds”
everyyear.Acrossthenetworkenvironment,theenterpriseworkswithnumerous
OEMand technologyvendors.Sucha hybrid landscape createschallengesof:
 Global coordination with multiple OEMs and vendors
 Consistency and accuracy in servicedelivery
 Managing configuration standards across the IT estate
 Ensuring transparent chargebacks tobusiness
 Most importantly, meeting business expectations of continuous reduction in IT
costs while increasing service performance
Automation solution
The client was working with Microland as a service and infrastructure system
integrator. Alongwith implementation ofITIL V3 and SixSigma process
frameworks,Microland and the enterprise worked across several automation
initiatives:
 Integrated vendor management workflows were designed and automated to
enableseamlessvendormanagement,andtodeliveraconsistentservice
experience
 Common service requests related to mailboxserviceswere automated. The IT
functioncouldnowsignupforuptimeofthebusinessservice(e.g.,email
service availability) as opposed to IT service (e.g., mailbox or server
availability)
 Server refresh “build” activities wereautomated
Key benefits
 Creationofcentrallymanagedinfrastructureservicesmodelwithhigh
predictability and improved end-user satisfaction
 TCO reduction in excess of US$50 million over five years
 Institution of outcome-based metrics beyond infrastructure element
performance, e.g., email service availability at 99.9%
 Threecyclesoftechnologyrefreshcarriedout over 10Xdatacenter
consolidation initiatives,wereachieved with zerodefects

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Case Study 2: Automating for Transformation
The enterprise
The enterprise is a leading mobile insurance provider in North America.
Business challenges
As part of its business model, the enterprise was required to:
 Ensurereal-timeactivationofitsservicesfornewdevicesthroughpartner
telecom providers
 Rapidly provision new products to existing customers and partners, and on-
board partners in new geographies
 Ensure PCI compliance at alltimes
Failure to achieve these goals would lead to significant revenue loss, poor user
experience, and escalated compliancerisk.
Technology and services environment
Theenterprise’sapplicationteamsneededtoreleasesoftwaretohelptelecom
operatorsmanage the mobileinsurance systems in atimelymanner.The
enterpriseITteamwasusingaDevOpsmethodologywithunderlyingprivate
cloud infrastructure. The entire process comprised three steps:
 Infrastructure provisioning: Procurement of the underlyinginfrastructure
needed to be approved by the client IT organizations for compatibility
 Platform provisioning: Once the infrastructure was procured, it was handed
over to the platform servicesteam.Platform components would be installed
and stitched together to act as an application. These processes needed to be
managed by logging service requests in the service management tool. During
thisstage,theDevandOpsteamswouldworktogethertoidentify,diagnose
and troubleshoot issues through a traditional incident and change
management process.
 Application release: Once the application was developed, it would be sent for
regression and UAT testing to the Test/QA team, which would coordinate with
Dev and Ops teams for troubleshooting. The Test/QA team would eventually
release the application intoproduction
Overall,thisentireprocessusedtotakemonths,severelyimpactingtime-to-
market for new releases.
Automation solution
Theenterpriselaunchedathree-phasedproject with aviewto reducingcycletime
at each successive process step:
 Infrastructure provisioning in Phase 1
 Platform provisioning in Phase 2
 Application release and DevOps in Phase3
Microland was engaged as the system integrator responsible for the task of
building, integrating, and automating the solution. The entire process was
automated across three project phases, starting from the infrastructure
Service Automation offers a
significant opportunity to
underscore the business value of
IT.
By thinking of infrastructure
automation in the context of a
mission-critical business process,
an insurance company redefined
its speed- to-market and created
a globally scalable, agile, and
compliant business model.

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Case Study 3: Automating for Governance
provisioning service requests to final integration, updating the CMDB, and
application release. Key project components involved:
 Automatedprovisioningofprivatecloudinfrastructureusinganindustry
standard cloud management suite
 Workflow-based automation of platformoverlay
 Continuous code integration using an open source solution
 Real-timeshipmentofcodecomponentstoglobalQAteams,and
automated workflow-generated test case deployment
Benefits realized
The following benefits were observed:
 Faster time-to-market, with overall cycle time to release applications reduced
from two months to less than one day, resulting in revenue assurance from
Day 1, and improved customer experience. Complete stacks and
environmentscould beprovisioned in fivetosixhours;earlier,infrastructure
provisioning alone would take up to 14 days
 Creation of a scalable business model for onboarding new partners and
expansion in new geographies
 100% PCI compliance
 Monthly cost reduction worth US$100,000 through reduced manpower
requirements
The enterprise
The enterpriseisone of India’s largestBFSI players,with extendedofficesacross
70+ locations within the country.
Business & IT challenges
 The company had a fragmented portfolio of vendors providing hardware,
software, and IT services
 Duetointerdependenciesacrosstheserviceslifecycle,therewereprocess
delays, leading to poor customer satisfaction
 Itwas difficultto geta transparentview ofoperations in sucha hybrid
environment;therewasverylittlelinkagebetweenITcosts,ITperformance,
and customer satisfaction scores
Automation solution
The company wanted to develop a governance and performance automation
framework with three keyobjectives:
 Provide users with easy access to IT resources while ensuring governance
policies
 Move IT management towards a more proactive paradigm, that could
manage incidents before theyoccurred
 Create a“single pane of glass”for the CIO and auditors to monitor IT
performanceforall vendors andinternalteams,andcreateatight
alignment between IT costs and performance

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
A Roadmap for Infrastructure Service Automation
The company engaged an agnostic infrastructure system integrator (Microland)
to deploy:
 A comprehensive IT asset build and asset map linked to business processes
 A self-service module for end-users delivered as a service
 A system of dashboards and flexible, automated reporting, that provided
complete visibility into ITperformance
Key benefits
 IT management teams could assess performance of multiple internal and
externalteamsacrossoperationalmetrics, and on a continuous,real-time
basis
 By recordingperformance datacontinuously, the companycould schedule,
or run on-demand audits
 By creating comprehensive asset maps the company reduced its variance
between physical and book value of assets by 70%
 Thesystemcreatedascalableframeworkforthecompanytoevaluateand
integrate new technology. By generating automated access to performance
dataacrossmultiplesystems,thecompanycouldanalyzetrends,create
technology performance baselines, and also benchmark service performance
Infrastructure service
automation: Maturity continuum
and adoption roadmap
Implementationofacomprehensiveautomationstrategyrequiresacareful
assessment of current maturity levels. While Big Bang approaches are unlikely to
work, it is essential to develop a long-term vision for an integrated automation
strategy.Mostenterprisesgothroughfourstagesofmaturity,withdistinct
problem statements and adoption implications (Exhibit 4).
Service characteristics Adoption focus
Source: Everest Group
E X H I B I T 4
Level 4:
Pro-active
Level 3:
Business-aligned
 Predictive IT operations
 Dramatic reduction in incidents
 Right-sized infrastructure
 Agile, scalable, self-service
 High operational efficiency
 Measurement aligned to business
service definitions
 Transparent multi-vendor governance
 Reactive incident/problem
management
 High amount of time spent on
repetitive tasks
 Service standardization and catalog
formulation
 Automated ticket management
 Manual BSM and workflow design
 Metrics still aligned to IT processes
 Multi-vendor governance is a challenge
 Skills and responsibilities defined at
process level
 Metrics for individual towers by
infrastructure element
 Manual ticket management
 Poor operational performance and
end-user experience
 Lack of transparency
 Loss of knowledge
 Prediction engine
 BSM framework and
workflow automation
 Hybrid infrastructure
orchestrator
 Governance automation
Level 2:
Standardized
 Service desk automation
 ITSM implementation
 Continuous improvement
programs
Level 1:
Tactical
 Configuration management
tools
 Infrastructure element
monitoring tools
Increasing
service
maturity

EGR-2014-10-R-1172
Conclusion: Mantras for the Automation Journey
Theadoptionroadmapmustbecreatedwithsufficientdue-diligenceontheas-is
maturitystate,missioncriticalityofbusinessprocessessupported,andexisting
technology investments.
While“leapfrogging”ispossibleacrossthecontinuum,andparticularly
understandablewithinthecontextofgenerating“quickwins”,some
dependencies are logical (e.g., ITSM implementation usually goes hand in
hand with service deskautomation).
Service-ledinfrastructureautomationcanofferalifelinetoenterprises
struggling with the contemporary IT challenges of efficiency, transformation,
and governance. However, the automation agenda also requires significant
executive commitment, and changemanagementisa criticalsuccessfactor.
Most importantly, infrastructure service automation involves a mindset shift from
technology to business service. This involves conceptualizing the IT infrastructure
servicesfunction as a provider,orchestrator, and governor of business services.
During the course of our research we discovered three “mantras” that help
enterprisesembracethismindsetchange,andsurvivetherisksoftechnology
lock-in:
 Servicefirst:Most enterprisestend tolay excessive focuson the choice ofthe
toolset. Hardware or tools-based approaches can create significant
technologylock-in,constraining businesscasesfor interrelated initiatives.
The opportunity for automation lies in stitching technology suites into
measurable business services. Successful automation initiatives require a
“service-first” mentality. Enterprise IT should be able to contract for “business
services” rather than for licenses or FTEs
 Agnosticism must: As a corollary, “agnosticism must” requires CIOs to
abstract away from product stacks that are likely to create lock-in via
economiccosts or the threatof knowledgeloss. Anagnosticpartnercan
help mediate across the broad spectrum of technology choices, and support
best-of-breedtechnology adoption.EnterpriseIT must beabletointegrate
and manageacrossmultipletechnologysuiteswithoutservice interruption
 Alignment constant: The true value of automation is realized when
enterprises use systems data to drive technology choices, enable new
services, and sunset applications and infrastructure piecesthat have served
their purpose. The process of alignment is a continuous one, and underlines
the need forIT teams“to know”,ratherthan “to think”.Enterprise IT needs
to move away from “managing the mess” to focusing on data-driven
decision-making, and building new business functionality
This study was funded, in part, by support from Microland
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EGR-2014-10-R-1172
About Everest Group
For more information about Everest Group, please contact:
+1-214-451-3110
info@everestgrp.com
For more information about this topic please contact the author(s):
Chirajeet Sengupta, Vice President
chirajeet.sengupta@everestgrp.com
Sivaram S., Senior Analyst
sivaram.s@everestgrp.com
Everest Group is an advisor to business leaders on next generation global
services with a worldwide reputation for helping Global 1000 firms dramatically
improve their performanceby optimizing their back-and middle-officebusiness
services. With a fact-based approach driving outcomes, Everest Group counsels
organizations with complex challenges related to the use and delivery of global
servicesintheirpursuitstobalanceshort-termneedswithlong-termgoals.
Throughitspracticalconsulting,originalresearchandindustryresource
services,EverestGrouphelpsclientsmaximizevaluefromdeliverystrategies,
talentandsourcingmodels, technologiesandmanagementapproaches.
Established in 1991, Everest Group serves users of global services, providers of
services,countryorganizations,andprivateequityfirms,insixcontinentsacross
allindustrycategories.Formoreinformation,pleasevisitwww.everestgrp.com
and research.everestgrp.com.
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