The Time Is Now for Considering Workload Automation

IT organizations have historically purchased job scheduling solutions with limited real-time visibility or application awareness that reduces the business alignment of this important technology asset. It is only during the past few years that IT executives have realized that batch processing of critical business applications requires a new paradigm —- a paradigm that centers around automation and event-based scheduling that understands and integrates with the underlying business application. The need to move to a more dynamic automation-enabled IT strategy has never been more necessary; globalization, compliance assurance pressure, real-time consumer and enterprise expectations, and the need to align technology investments with business outcomes are key requirements for business success.Executives are faced with endless pressure to lower infrastructure costs and limit headcount increases while improving quality of service (QoS) capabilities. It will be increasingly difficult to achieve these goals without automating and integrating into business processes investments such as workload automation. Workload automation offers a more dynamic, flexible, and agile infrastructure that can respond to business events that drive revenue as well as datacenter activities. This paper examines the evolution of IT organizations as they move from static batch processing to dynamic workload automation capabilities that integrate with and understand business processes and trigger revenue-generating actions based on real-time requests. The paper also looks at the role of vendor UC4 in this strategically important market.