The #1 driver in moving to private cloud is speed and agility, with 73% of enterprises citing it as the most important driver.* In order to ensure rapid deployments in cloud environments, you need not only automated infrastructure provisioning but also automated release operations for the application layer. Developers can do more in the cloud, and infrastructure can be turned up instantly, so release operations needs to keep up – release processes must be cut down to minutes and rollbacks have to be fast and flawless.
In a recent article on SD Times, author Tijl Vuyk, explains how cloud computing isn’t just about technology but a whole new way of working. Every day, innovative companies realize new ways to use the cloud to deliver ever-greater business value. The newest area ripe for improvement is business and IT process automation. Business and IT processes are notorious for including a multitude of manual steps that are costly, time-consuming and prone to errors. Meanwhile, constrained budgets force IT and business to make the best use of all of their people. For both groups, automation is the clear solution to unnecessary manual effort.
According to CIO Insight in early 2011:
“…by 2015, Gartner anticipates that cloud computing will hasten the use of tools and automation in IT services, resulting in a marked increase in productivity levels for service providers and a reduction in their costs of delivery. These tools and automation solutions are expected to eliminate 25% of IT labor hours.”
Clearly, a 25% reduction in IT labor hours would make an incredible difference to the bottom line of any organization. However, great as it sounds, switching to cloud automation might not be as simple as you first think. You still have to go through the pains and hurdles of deployment. What if you don’t have specific in-house expertise or knowledge on how best to automate a specific process? Even if you do, your resources may be tied up elsewhere.
How can you use the cloud to automate your deployment processes? Does it really simplify your IT processes?
Click here to read Vuyk’s full article ‘Why you should automate with the cloud’
Click here to learn more about automating releases in the cloud