Forbes Innovation | Building IT Infrastructure Resilience For A Digitally Transformed Enterprise

As business digital transformation accelerates, business operations are directly tied to network resilience. When the network goes down, so do business operations. Organizations undertaking digital transformation with an endpoint in mind will quickly realize that the goalposts are constantly moving. Digital transformation is—and should be—a continuous cycle of innovation.

For enterprises, network automation and digital transformation must go hand-in-hand. This symbiosis has become essential to developing competitive advantages and remaining resilient, but vigilance is required to maintain network uptime and business continuity. Business leaders must plan their ongoing network automation efforts with disaster scenarios such as outages and security breaches in mind while simultaneously considering future scale.

Some multinational organizations were ahead of the curve in accelerating digital transformation resiliently, but it wasn't until 2020 and the pandemic that businesses of every size started optimizing their digital infrastructure at scale. Because many organizations were so quick to undergo digital transformation, a myriad of problems in design, infrastructure and operations came to light. As a result, these organizations were faced with the question of how to intelligently automate processes to accelerate digital transformation while keeping the foundational infrastructure and network operations manageable.

Enterprise downtime is more expensive than ever, with costs exceeding $1 million to over $5 million per hour—not including "legal fees [or] criminal or civil penalties the company may incur"—according to ITIC's 2021 Hourly Cost of Downtime?survey. For business leaders, it's crucial to understand the intersection of ongoing digital transformation and the infusion of capabilities that ensure resilience and security such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Understanding what resilience means as it pertains to a stable technical foundation is vital for future scale and optimized performance.

A Stable Foundation And Trust Are Key

A stable foundation is vital to effectively transform your organization digitally. Getting the foundation right and ensuring observability across the network can take significant effort. Once you've got it right, however, everything can move forward efficiently, and businesses will be able to remediate devices across the network more easily. A solid foundation can enable businesses to make changes with confidence and allow them to lean into self-defending, self-operating and self-driven capabilities.

By operationalizing a safe, predictable and compliant network foundation, businesses are able to provide more advanced capabilities and services. The process is only possible by introducing a single universal abstraction layer that dynamically discovers, interrogates and normalizes all devices on a network and constantly maintains them. Ultimately, this can prevent dangerous outages, enhance security and increase network agility. Technology such as network RPA and self-operating bots can help future-proof organizations.

Beginning The Journey Toward Transitioning To A Network Automation Strategy

As organizations begin developing a network automation strategy, there are many steps for leaders to take into account. These include developing a vision, setting goals, establishing strategies and objectives, determining tactics and finding the right resources. In terms of network automation functionality, one thing that comes up frequently is the ability to confirm automated processes before they are implemented. This is particularly important in the early stages of automation deployment, as building trust is essential. Organizations can take internal steps to assess people, processes and technology. This can enable leaders to determine which route is best.

When assessing people, leaders should look at current skills, workload and history with adopting new technologies as well as factor in what must be insourced versus outsourced for programming and scripting. In terms of process, it's vital to assess how networks and network changes are managed today, how well processes are documented, and what current steps are in place for approvals and auditing. When evaluating technology, leaders and teams must stay current on the solutions available and pay particular attention to the solutions that have been proven to work best across the network ecosystem.

Each enterprise will likely have its own unique path and automation journey. Stay laser-focused on achieving intended outcomes, and avoid building homegrown solutions when you can buy. Internal development can quickly increase vulnerabilities through software management dependencies and technical debt.

What Does Resiliency Actually Mean?

Today, governments and regulators are doubling down on what it means to be resilient, and businesses should consistently reevaluate what resiliency means to them. At a minimum, resiliency means having stable operations, consistent revenue, manageable security risks, efficient workflows, and an informed and agile employee base. Having visibility over the operating systems of network devices can reduce network downtime and open doors to further efficiencies. If a business is resilient, it can maintain stable network operations, drive down IT costs and deliver a more robust service at a lower cost. Overall, when businesses can dramatically lower IT expenses and have better visibility, they can expend resources on separate projects that improve the quality of service—a win for all.

From a regulatory perspective, regulators now want to see everything documented. Take mobile banking, for example; regulators want to know everything, including what code is being used on which servers as well as which people and processes have access to which services. Intelligently automated network operations can allow enterprises to be better equipped to answer the questions that regulators ask, such as how they're validating and how often they're doing a failover. However, if done manually, business leaders can find themselves faced with major vulnerabilities, and the time and effort necessary to remediate could be extended to the point where it's too late to recover gracefully.

Today's organizations are under increased scrutiny from regulators and customers alike, and automation is necessary for remaining resilient and compliant through a digital transformation journey. Network automation underpins it all. As with anything, evolution breeds complexity. To overcome this complexity, businesses must prepare for continuous change and turn potential vulnerabilities into strengths that can build operational competitive advantages. It's vital to move away from damage control and use the technology available today to future-proof your organization. The time is now to get smart.

Jeff Gray is the CEO and co-founder of?Gluware, a leading provider of intelligent network automation.?Read Jeff Gray's full executive profile here.?

Source: Gluware In The News