automation using it process orchestrator - by ketan vora

8/7/2019 Automation using IT Process Orchestrator - By Ketan Vora

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Introduction:

IT Process Orchestrator (ITPO) is also called as Run Book Automation (RBA). ITPO has the ability to define,build, orchestrate, manage, automate and report on workflows that support system and network operationalprocesses. A process can cross all management disciplines and interact with all types of infrastructure elements,

such as applications, databases and hardware.

Demands on IT continue to outpace resources and budgets. Management is under pressure to decide betweenproviding the right quality of service to the business and adding resource costs to keep up with the increasingworkload. A breakthrough is need in operational efficiency.

A typical companys demand on IT is depicted in Figure 1. This X-Y chart represents Task Volume overTime. The flat blue line represents static resource headcount. The upward sloping red line represents the everincreasing task volume. Over a period of time it represents that task volume had increase above the NormalWorkload and unless proper action is taken IT would not be able to provide the quality of service to thebusiness that directly relates to loss of revenue due to critical application failure. There will be always struggleto obtain additional budget for more resources to keep up with the demand, represented by the doted stair step

line. The problem with that part is IT will always be one step behind, barely treading water. Automation is thekey to keep up with the demands.

Figure - 1

For IT Outsourcers, this challenge is compounded by complexities in client to outsourcer communication,technology diversification, and manual processes. Client executives are under constant pressure to improve theprojects margin, eliminate penalties and increase revenue by adding services.

Typical usage:

Automated Disaster Recovery Many applications do not require or support Live / Live failover capability but due to current

practices companies still build disaster recovery data centers with racks of servers sitting idle

Automation using IT Process Orchestrator Author: Ketan Vora, [email protected]

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waiting for the primary data centre to fail all powered on and consuming energy. As part ofan Automated Disaster Recovery process, for these less critical applications ITPO canorchestrate the powering up of the disaster recovery infrastructure on failure, check theapplication is running correctly on the powered up machines and then cut over the networklinks from the primary site to the disaster recovery site thus returning the service to the user.

Virtual Machine Environment Capacity Management Many clients are developing a self service virtual machine solution for customers. This

requires the provision of infrastructure within the data centre to host both known VMrequirements and some space for unexpected surges in required infrastructure. ITPO canautomate capacity flexing in this environment by powering on new blade servers and addingthese to the VM Infrastructure only when required. Once the surge has passed these machinesare then powered down again until required

Automated Server provisioning The data centre has been pre-populated with racks of blade servers all powered down. As

part of an automated server provision and build process ITPO selects an available blade fromthe rack to meet this new request and then powers on this new server now it is required andgoes to deploy OS and software applications to this machine This way reductions in service

delivery costs and create new service offerings. Auto ticket creation

In a typical data center environment there is event correlation software which will receive

events from software, network, hardware, storage devices and applies logic to arrive at rootcause event/ problem. It is a time consuming task to create manually a ticket in the ServiceDesk software based upon issues which are encountered in the datacenter which varies fromsoftware, network, hardware, storage etc. issues. ITPO can be used to integrate with even co-relation tool and service desk tool to automate ticket creation based on input from even co-relation tool.

Auto ticket exchange It is increasingly becoming common in outsourcing deal that more than one service provider

are managing clients environment (i.e. one vendor will manage network, other will managerserver and the main vendor will manager service management and service desk). In thisenvironment each vendor will have their own service desk. To create ticket in one vendorsenvironment and again create the same ticket in other vendors service desk tool is a tediousand time-consuming task. ITPO is very useful in this scenario and it can integrate multipleservice desk tools to exchange ticketing information.



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Implementation:

ITPO typically delivers the greatest value when it is used to automate processes which span multipletechnology domains and systems, organizations and geographies. For this to succeed a virtualorganization must be built which spans these boundaries and this must be backed up by Executive

Sponsors with a strong will to drive the organization to make the ITPO program a success.

Following are typical steps required for any ITPO project:



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Step Activity/ step Activity Description

1 Evaluate & AssessProcesses

Operational Instructions process document (i.e. workinstruction describing manual and automated steps) and anyother relevant document/ diagram exist will be used to create

"As-is" model in Visio.

The diagram should have swim lanes in place. It shouldcontain all the scenarios/ use cases to be automated/modeled. (e.g. in case of Auto ticket process automation weshould consider "Record Incident" and "Monitor Incident" boththe scenarios)

2 Review and Approve "As-Is" Model

All parties involved in the current operation must review andsign-off the "As-Is" Model

3 Propose "To-Be" Model The "As-Is" model will be reviewed with the strategic intent byBPE and changes will be suggested. The diagram created in

previous step relates to only current processes in place.However, the company will have strategic intent for theimprovement of existing process. This activity is focused onlong term objectives.

It should not limit the focus only on the process which isbeing automated but should consider end-to-end process atthe time of suggesting "to-be" model.

4 Review and approve "To-be" model

Review the draft "to-be" model considering existing processportfolio. All parties involved in the current operation mustreview and sign-off the "to-be" Model

It may be possible that a portion of the "to-be" model isalready automated earlier. Reusability should be consideredat the time of reviewing the model

5 Verify Business

Justification

Verify Business Justification before proceeding to next steps.

We need to have justification (cost, resource optimization,time optimization etc.) for the project. In this activity we willverify that the "To-be" model created in previous steps indeedjustifies the project.

6 Create Required InterfaceSpecification

Any required additional interfaces that need to be developedmust have an Interface Control Document generated to show



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Following are typical roles involved for the implementation of ITPO project:

Stakeholder The business person who would like to automate the activates (process) in his area

Subject Matter Expert The person will have in-depth knowledge of the process - procedures related tostakeholder request. (e.g. to automate database administrator activity, the person shouldbe expert in DBA)His knowledge can be used to verify and understand operational steps.

Process OrchestrationArchitect

The person will be an expert and can use the best practice related to the modeling of theprocess steps/activities.

Process Librarian The person should have clear vision of what should the company have in terms oftechnology, best practices, design principles surrounding tool. He will maintain processportfolio.

Business Process Expert(BPE)

The person should be expert to provide visionary direction to convert as-is process tostrategic process

Operations The staff who is carrying out day to day activities related to the process which is beingmodeled. They follow the instruction as per SME and don't have more knowledge aboutthe steps.

Design & Build Engineer The person who is expert in the modeling tool.



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Benefits:

Following are typical benefits:

Managing scarcity of skilled resource. Increase IT personnel effectiveness and managing manpower

cost. Information Technology is a backbone of any industry and economy of the country. There is

no industry as of now where IT is not playing significant role be it banking, insurance,manufacturing, retail etc. Because of this widespread usage of IT there is a requirement ofskilled resources that can run & maintain the implemented IT systems. According to industryestimates, IT organizations spend an average of two-thirds of their total budgets on day-to-daymanagement of operations. ITPO is one of the solution to manage the scarcity of skilledresource as automating repetitive tasks associated with IT operations process will increase ITpersonnel effectiveness and hence number of skill people required will be less.

Most of the IT budget is spent towards manpower cost. Automating most of the tasks will

result into few skilled resources and hence less spending on manpower. It will also avoid

human error at the time of carrying out task as no manual intervention is required Workflows are initiated based on external requirements such as events, schedules or requests

These workflows in turn can be used to automate the tedious, repetitive tasks that areundertaken manually by individuals. Automation of these tasks makes them more efficientbecause it makes their management an exception-based process (i.e. people only have toengage in the process when the automation has problems.) Moreover, Task Automation makesprocess execution more consistent. Human beings all tend to perform tasks somewhadifferently based on their sense of tribal knowledge associated with a given task.Automation is highly consistent and in essence captures this tribal knowledge in a modular,reusable and traceable format.

The benefits of the ITPO solution include automation of labor-intensive management tasks

(such as process design and definition, integration with technology management tools, and

process execution and management) so one can redirect human resources to value-generatingwork. We can improve our ability to comply with service level commitments and meet bestpractices objectives.

Hide the complexity of the process from the user and enforce the use of the appropriate application atthe appropriate point in the process

User may not be able to execute the complex process efficiently all the time as it depends upon

the skill level of user and efficiency at the time of process execution. Also underlyingapplication change will require the entire user community who are executing the process to gettrained and get expertise. Wherein once process is defined properly in ITPO, it will execute italways consistently as there is no manual intervention required. Also underlying application

change will not require training user community but needing only once the change in PO bythe expert so that appropriate application is used at appropriate point in the process. This waywe can hide the complexity of multiple applications from the user where necessary, reducingthe need for specific application expertise

Process owners/managers dont necessarily need (nor desire) the detailed knowledge of how

processes are executed behind the scenes. A top-level workflow identifies key steps in a top-level process e.g. process of provisioning of the server will provision the server and one of thestep will be discover the provisioned server. How to discover the provisioned server can be in a



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different workflow which will be initiated by parent workflow and hence we can say processabstraction has been achieved.

ITPO serving in its role as an Orchestrator provides the when and what of the overall

process while the integrations to tools defines the how. Hence individuals composingOrchestrations can focus on the requirements of the overall process and dont require deep

product-domain knowledge.

Standardize the process across multiple environments without jeopardizing the investments made withinthe traditional environment and allowing investment in new domain technologies without significantinfrastructure changes

ITPO addresses the When and What of automation and the management tools in the

environment provide the How. When viewed as a whole this provides a complete picture forintegrating people, process and technology in the context of efficiency and consistency. Thismeans ITPO preserves the existing investment in tools. It also provides opportunity forstreamlining operations and integrating/migrating technologies as opportunities affordthemselves without much impact as process will remain same.

Almost no coding required Some of the ITPO available in the market has out-of-the-box adapters to integrate with

different tools and hence no coding is required and no longer has to get vendors together in aroom to discuss integrating their products. The ITPO tool can also carry out basic operationssuch as monitor/copy/delete file, send email, invoke web service, monitor disk space, monitorSNMP traps, Query database etc. which will minimize significant effort for the integration.

Reduce costly system outages and improve customer service Industry estimates indicate that 80 percent of all IT service outages are caused by human or

process error. As there will be automated execution of process there will be less frequency ofsystem outages as manual intervention is not there and hence human error is minimal.

Analytics and decision support dashboard by way of KPI/ Graphs. How the processes are executed inline with established policies and service levels.

The ITPO suit of tool also includes Dashboard capability. The Dashboard enables to view

real-time information about key metrics, such as success/failure status, duration, loaddistribution and ROI on automated IT tasks. One can view this information in a single unifiedportal using a web browser

Consistent process execution as it does not depend upon human. The automated processes are built on best-practice standards, and they ensure compliance with

corporate policies and regulatory requirements every time.

Simulation It is important to notice that ITPO suite simulates a runtime environment which allows the

developer to step through a workflow and check the data entering and exiting each step in theworkflow and confirm successful execution of the basic objects and logic functions.

Analyzing and evaluating both the current and the new process ITPO can be used to

calculate activity-based costs, assist in conducting surveys or run simulations to ascertainpotential bottlenecks.



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Lower IT operating costs and Improve operation efficiencies As we automate operation process, it will result into Reducing mean time to repair (MTTR),

increasing mean time between failures (MTBF). Reduce mean time to repair (MTTR) up to 75percent through accelerated, standardized, and policy-based response to events



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References:-

1. http://en.wikipedia.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/

automation using it process orchestrator - by ketan vora

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