Blog Post Top 10 Take-Aways from the 2022 State of IT Automation Report

Stonebranch is proud to introduce the first-ever global State of IT Automation report. Earlier this year, we partnered with the IEEE Computer Society, the premier technical education organization, to survey IT professionals focused on automation and orchestration. Their answers offer a glimpse into how enterprises are orchestrating their complex ecosystems of on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, and containerized environments.

Within this unique report, IT automation experts — all from companies of 1000 or more employees — reveal their perspectives on how automation intersects with DataOps, DevOps, Cloud Ops, and IT Ops priorities. Featuring dozens of automation stats from 2022, this research is filled with insights that will help you both benchmark and evolve your IT automation and orchestration program.

Top 10 Take-Aways

1. Automation adoption is growing.

88% of enterprises plan to grow their investment in automation in 2022. In general, companies are looking at a cross-section of automation software. Specifically, IT automation has become increasingly important.

2. Cloud adoption is a key driver in automation’s growth.

Traditionally relegated to on-premises data centers, most enterprises (69%) have discovered that they’ll need to automate cloud-based apps and platforms, not to mention containers — to control cost, reduce complexity, and improve reliability. 

3. Hybrid IT environments take the lead.

Nearly half (46%) of all mid-size and large enterprise organizations operate in hybrid IT environments that include on-premises, cloud (public and private), and containerized microservices. 

4. Cloud Automation has evolved into orchestration.

Siloed automation programs work when targeting on-premises servers, mainframes, and applications. However, cloud environments add a new layer of complexity, which requires a new way of orchestrating automated processes that bridge the gap between on-prem and cloud.

5. Multi-cloud environments are the norm.

92% of respondents use two or more public cloud service providers in their day-to-day activities, and 91% automate data transfers between multiple public cloud providers. This makes it all the more important to avoid the limitations of vendor-locked-in native cloud schedulers.

6. Service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAP) are becoming more popular.

As an evolution from traditional workload automation tools, Gartner coined the SOAP category in 2020. After just two years, 43% of enterprises report that they will invest in SOAP by the end of 2022. As a category, SOAPs represent a platform that provides a unified administration console and orchestration engine to manage complex hybrid IT environments.

7. Self-service automation creates citizen automators.

93% of responders shared that their organization has a centralized IT automation team. However, they are not just automating central IT processes. 84% cite that business users (HR, marketing, sales, finance, etc.), data teams, and developers have been empowered as citizen automators, using a variety of tools that can be connected to centrally run and control automation portals.

8. Data pipeline orchestration relies heavily on cloud.

For 90% of respondents, more than half of their data tools live in the cloud. Of course, the flip side is that 73% of respondents still rely on data management tools that reside on-premises. The net is that most enterprises need a platform to bridge the automation gaps between environments.

9. Integration is key.

Source data and the data tools to manage data pipelines routinely change. 78% of respondents reported that they change data sources at least quarterly, if not more often. This translates to a requirement for automation and orchestration platforms to easily integrate and connect to an ever-changing variety of analytics tools, source systems, and storage technologies.

10. Everyone feels responsible for cloud operations.

91% of respondents cite responsibility for at least some cloud operations, even though only 9% identified CloudOps as their full-time role. The question becomes, how to empower end-users with cloud access, while maintaining a reasonable level of centralized control.

Read the Report

The Stonebranch 2022 Global State of IT Automation report is based on 366 responses to an online survey conducted by IEEE in January and February 2022. Respondents are all IT professionals who work for companies with 1000 or more employees, and are directly involved in IT automation. Functions represented include IT Ops, DataOps, CloudOps, PlatformOps, IT Service Management, and Application Development, as are a variety of industries, including banking and finance, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, government, and more.  as are locations across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Great news, the 2023 version of this report is now availalbe. Download the full Stonebranch 2023 Global State of IT Automation report to deep dive into the latest findings. You can also watch the visit the 2023 article for a breifing on the latest analysis.