Preparing staff for increased IT automation

Accenture’s Technology Vision survey of corporate execs say they are making significantly more investments in IT automation with more than half planning to use machine learning and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) solutions extensively. Does this mean that IT staff is heading the way of the dodo?

Advancement of AI and robotics has created a fair bit of concern in the workplace, including IT groups, about increasingly sophisticated machines taking a greater role in the IT ecosystem. In an interview on CIO.com, Chetan Dube, founder and CEO of AI systems company IPSoft said that IT as a business function has been reluctant to change.

“Instead of designing business operations around emerging technologies,” said Dube, “IT is typically forced to work around infrastructure that already exists.”

The key to implementing increased IT automation is to offload the engineering “chores,” the repetitive and routine tasks to create the time and manpower to focus on creativity and innovation. Along with changing automation, people’s skills and experiences need to evolve as well. All periods of rapid technological development generate new roles that were previously unknown.

“IT managers need to think about how they adapt to managing automated processes rather than organizing their functions around the more limited capacity of manual workers. This is massive shift in mindset, but it will lead to greater opportunity for more highly skilled and varied job roles.”

IT automation is going to take my job

Time and again we’ve heard this at Uplogix from network admins, sometimes from CCIEs with years of experience and technical depth. It’s kind of a knee-jerk reaction to learning about some of the automation capable with the Uplogix platform. Typically this is quickly followed with a deeper look of concentration as they begin to see the possibilities of life with fewer routine network management tasks, less frequent late-night and weekend service calls, and better remote tools for solving more difficult issues.

Some of the key IT automation features are:

  • Automate standard support routines | Uplogix provides numerous recovery procedures that allow you to automatically address common faults without human intervention such as automatically rebooting a hung, or wedged, device to multiple types of configuration recovery.  A robust automation framework is provided for end-users to modify prepackaged or define sequential and conditional recovery procedures that align with their support practices (e.g.   Clear Service Module -> Cycle Interface -> Show Tech -> Reboot -> Cycle Power).
  • Recover from failed configuration changes via the powerful SurgicalRollback™ feature | This added “safety net” enables IT staff to make real-time to changes to network elements without the risk of failed configurations impacting operational performance.
  • Reboot hung equipment | Uplogix’ automated diagnosis framework can automatically detect a hung, or wedged, device and instantly cycle power to the unit. The Uplogix Local Manager can often detect and resolve this common problem before traditional management tools even know it exists.
  • Troubleshoot WAN connection issues | Uplogix can automatically detect common WAN problems, including outages or flapping circuits, and provide an instant diagnosis with the supporting trending or configuration data to speed recovery, document outages, or facilitate carrier resolution.

For more information, visit the Reliable network management automation page on Uplogix.com.

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