Highlights:

  • The survey found that I&O uses automation most often in deployment domains, which is a natural place to focus automation activities as organizations try to reduce friction between I&O and its customers who make technology.
  • The survey also found that only 21% of I&O leaders say their automation projects are going very well.

A recent survey by Gartner of 304 Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders and their teams found that 85% of I&O leaders who don’t have full automation yet plan to get more automated in the next two to three years.

Given the rising interest in I&O automation, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of organizations will use structured automation to provide flexibility and efficiency. This is up from 20 percent of organizations that had structured automation in 2021.

The survey found that I&O uses automation most often in deployment domains, a natural focus of automation activities as organizations try to reduce friction between I&O and its customers who make technology. Most surveyed people said their efforts to automate application deployment, security compliance and server deployment had an effect and were worth it.

But the rise of DevOps, agile, and site reliability engineering (SRE) has led to more automation in operational domains like monitoring, analytics, and incident problem resolution. The survey found that with just 43% of I&O teams now automating monitoring and analytics, 83% of them find such automation efforts helpful. In the same way, only 36% of I&O units automate incident and problem resolution, but more than 75% of those surveyed thought it was a good idea.

The survey also found that only 21% of I&O leaders say their automation projects are going very well. Gartner experts say that to manage I&O automation and enhance success rate successfully, I&O teams should automate deployment yet make sure not to neglect to automate important operational tasks like change management, vulnerability remediation, backup, and disaster recovery.

Set the foundation for success by figuring out the potential value of automation, improving processes before automating them, and giving your employees the skills they need to use automation.

Gartner’s 2022 Adaptive Automation in Infrastructure & Operations Survey was done from April to May 2022 with 304 respondents from North America, EMEA, and APAC. The respondents came from a wide range of industries and companies with annual revenue of USD 1 billion or more. Respondents who were qualified were senior IT I&O leaders, peers, or direct reports who oversaw IT automation projects.