Following on from our article last month about the top cloud skills you need to ensure job security and stay ahead of the internal competition. The next biggest must have skill on our list is understanding automation. Automation comes in all guises, and is now appearing in every area of the enterprise from the way we manage our customers and clients, to the way we handle data.
Automation in the workplace
How often have you heard the phrase “We are all human; we all make mistakes”. 
As humans, we do make mistakes. Usually born out of the boredom that comes with repetitive tasks, we forget things or do not pay enough attention. This is where software pays dividends, as it much better equipped to deal with repetitive or mundane tasks, than we are.
Let’s take a look at some of the different automation processes in the cloud enterprise:
Workflow Automation Software consists of a sequence of connected steps or actions, that follow each other. For control purposes workflow acts as a virtual representation of actual work being carried out, and can be governed by policy, projects or hierarchies etc.
Virtual Automation is managing the underlying resources available by simplifying complex data-center environments and the time it takes to manage the resources. Automation can come in the form of virtualization and virtual guests, using Software Defined Servers (SDS), which are separate from the physical server hardware.
Network Automation is where you use software to define the flow of data traffic within an enterprise by using Software Defined Networks (SDN) that observe the characteristics of network switches and ports.
Storage Automation allows us to step away from physical storage boundaries, as we use virtual servers to store our data. Storage workflow managers enable us to automate complex tasks with built-in APIs, which allow us to specify the capacity, performance and data-protection criteria.
Through these types of automation, our network traffic becomes more evenly balanced, and your business processes become more efficient and consistent. Plus at every level of the enterprise, less time is spent manually tuning and troubleshooting business and data issues.
Still need convincing?
To see if your organisation will benefit from some or all of the automation processes listed above, begin by analysing the time that your company spends on performing rote tasks, or monitoring systems and processes. Then explore whether software automation will enable you to handle these performances faster and more efficiently than manually.
Then consider what will happen if you don’t adopt some form of software automation for either your infrastructure or business processes. Will your team eventually become overwhelmed? And, what cost could this have to the business?
IT is changing, and you can either be fully on-board with the changes and lead from the front, or fear being left behind.