In the race to digital transformation, businesses are embracing the benefits of automating IT. The strategy is clear – anytime an organization can minimize risk and human error, it can save resources and rework costs, opening up time for innovation.
But as enterprises have begun to adopt this trend, a more intriguing benefit has emerged: automation provides visibility into an organization’s entire IT infrastructure, revealing blind spots and potential security vulnerabilities. From here, organizations are well equipped to rapidly identify and remediate.
In an era where data breaches are becoming all too frequent – with the average cost of a breach topping $3.92 million – this added insight brings confidence to performance, enables speed and certainty during a technology transition, and provides the assurance of minimized risk.
From the network to the data center and beyond, automation is more important to organizations than ever.
Automation addresses expanding IT demands
The evolution of technology is placing unprecedented demand on IT. With organizations under competitive pressures to deliver more innovation, while adhering to their current budget, digitized operations can help them rebalance resources between running the business and supporting growth projects. Automation can play a key role in freeing up these resources so teams can focus on developing innovation. As a result, the requirements for automation are increasing.
IT teams can now access the capabilities of Cisco Business Critical Services (BCS) to automate repetitive tasks while deploying new services and products.
For example, automated testing enables IT teams to accelerate their deployment at scale, and minimize risk, so they can successfully go to market faster. By accessing a dedicated software platform, extensive test cases, and expert guidance, organizations can harness continuous automation and integration testing to boost productivity and profitability.
Plus, it protects and defends your business
Automation also enables easier management of network security. With 47% of businesses saying their IT spend is being driven by increased security concerns, it’s important to ensure these dollars aren’t going to waste.
Automated policy algorithms and analysis can reveal security blind spots that might otherwise lead to cyber attacks. Predicting vulnerabilities and uncovering weak links in your infrastructure will enable speedy remediation back to a secure state, thwarting hackers and data breaches.
Accelerating resolution with Automated Fault Management
Every day, millions of messages pour through a network – some of which form patterns revealing issues in advance. With the right technology, you have the ability to spot them.
Automated Fault Management provides the key to identifying and resolving these issues, by combining automation and machine learning with Cisco’s anonymized data from over 30 million devices worldwide. If the data reveals a warning pattern in your network, we complete the following steps without human interaction:
- Generate an email identifying an issue and directing it to the appropriate source
- Open a case with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC)
- Launch an automatic list of remediation steps to solve the problem
For example, one U.S. service provider is using Automated Fault Management to detect and troubleshoot network issues 80% faster, with 30% less effort for case management.
Ready to unlock the benefits?
In the space of a few years, IT automation has grown into a crucial time-saving strategy, that enables your IT teams to confidently rebalance resources, reduce risks, and accelerate innovation.
For more on transforming, visit Business Critical Services.
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