What is IT Automation and Why Does it Matter?
Have you ever wondered how much time your employees spend trying to reach technical support? Maybe, you have thought about how long it takes for the tech department to find those responsible for dealing with a specific request? And what about the case when your company’s client can’t receive a prompt response? There is a risk of losing the client.
One can prevent all these troubles by applying IT automation in the working processes.
This concept is applied to mitigate the pressures of digital proliferation, which involves using various tools and practices. In case you strive for optimization, IT process automation is the key to achieving progress and making all the processes more efficient.
In this article, Qubit Labs has decided to tap into this trend and find out why more and more companies opt for it instead of following usual solutions. Let’s start with the IT automation definition.
What is IT Automation Software Used For?
In the development process, there is a handful of tasks, which are repetitive and time-consuming. These might be batch processes, large data transfers, or various entry tasks. The best solution, in this case, is IT automation, which takes over the mentioned tasks, hence, reducing operational costs, increasing efficiency, and allowing professionals to take care of more urgent operations.
Since the most common form of IT-enabled organizational change is automation, it also provides for extending automation capabilities and applications into specific technologies. These include containers, methodologies (DevOps), or cloud, edge computing, testing, and security. Since we have addressed the question “what is automation in IT industry,” let’s take a look at its main advantages.
The Benefits of Automation in IT Services
IT automation allows companies to outpace the competitors and stay ahead of market changes. It’s impossible to be among the leaders if one’s employees are engaged in dealing with insignificant tasks instead of developing the products that can make a breakthrough in the industry.
Higher incomes
Time is money, and automation allows businesses to use most of the time for improving their business. You can invest as much time as you want into a company’s business processes since you have more of this resource. Besides, the best IT automation software helps to exclude wasting time and money on monotonous manual labor.
Cost reduction
If your company has established automated processes, they work while you and your employees’ commute, sleep, or rest. You pay for the IT infrastructure automation once, then customize and test it. In case the final analytics is fine, everything will work independently the moment you approve; there is nothing else to be adjusted.
Enhanced productivity
Since there will be no need for manual work, your business’s output will significantly increase and allow the employees to utilize their skills and knowledge for more critical projects. Besides, your company will complete more tasks in a day because the IT automation tools help to reduce turnaround time.
Improved accuracy
The human factor plays a crucial role in all the processes, so it often happens that some tasks or routine operations aren’t correctly fulfilled. When applying IT process automation tools, you can be sure that the projects will contain zero errors because the tasks are performed under the instructions. However, your IT automation engineer will have to conduct extensive testing to guarantee there are no errors in the process itself.
Greater availability
Power cuts can result in million dollars revenue losses and a company’s reputation damages. Automation can provide the highest levels of availability to IT operations. If you opt for IT security automation, you won’t have to worry about whether there is an automated save or recovery or remote communication. Besides, it enables to decrease downtime and significantly mitigate the damages, if any.
The Most Popular IT Automation Tools
IT Automation is a general term covering a set of tools. We came up with a list of the most popular and efficient tools for IT Automation that are aimed at solving specific issues and perform certain processes.
Katalon Studio
This is a complex test automation tool, which can be applied for API, Web< Desktop, and mobile testing. It offers an extensive set of features, including creating test cases, executing tests, reporting results, and integrating with a number of other tools. It runs on several operating systems, namely Windows, Linux, and macOS. Besides, one can integrate Katalon Studio with a handful of different tools, like JIRA, Slack, or Git. Moreover, this IT automation tool includes unique features, for example, object spy, user-friendly IDE, and browser plugin.
Cucumber
This is an open-source Behavior Development Driver tool. It supports different programming languages, including Ruby, Scala, Java, and Groovy. Its main benefits are helping in communication and collaboration, enabling testers, developers, and customers to draft test scripts in a joint effort. The code written with Cucumber can be executed in other frameworks, including Selenium and Ruby.
Testsigma
This IT automation tool is AI-driven and uses simple English to automate complex tests. It has everything required for meeting the continuous delivery needs. The tool provides the ecosystem which has all the elements needed for automating Web, mobile applications, and API services. Besides, it supports a handful of device/OS/browser combos both on the cloud and local machines.
LambdaTest
Being a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform, LambdaTest enables users to perform automated compatibility testing of their websites or web apps. It offers a combination of 2000+ desktop and mobile browsers, and you can choose any language you prefer, like JavaScript, Python, or Java. Moreover, this tool allows for parallel testing.
Selenium
Selenium is an open-source web automation tool that can automate several operational systems, namely Windows, macOS, and Linux. Also, it performs in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. It allows writing tests by using most programming languages. This feature enables websites to interact with a browser the real user would. With Selenium, you can create scalable browser-centered automation test scripts.
TestProject
This is a free end-to-end user automation tool, which is applicable for Web, mobile, and API testing. It includes a scriptless test recorder for non-tech users, many community-powered addons, and detailed report dashboards. With TestProject, you can install and manage dependencies and drivers and distribute test execution locally and in the cloud.
Unified Functional Testing
Being one of the most sought-after cross-platform automation testing tools, UFT provides top-notch testing solutions. It enables developers and testers to collaborate in a shared environment, making functional testing more affordable and easy. It has web testing functionality and support for many other diverse technologies, namely Oracle, PeopleSoft, and WPF. With it, one can automate complete end-to-end testing workflows.
Eggplant
This is a licensed tool suite aimed at app and GUI testing. It offers AI-driven test automation for usability, performance testing, and functionality, as well as provides analytics into user- and business-focused metrics. It ensures responsive and scalable application experiences in order to increase user engagement.
WorkSoft
The tool offers ERP business end-to-end solutions and unmatched support for web and cloud applications. It provides pre-built and out-of-the-box optimizations for more than 250 popular web and cloud apps. WorkSoft can be deployed in cases when an SAP project is in a certain stage, like implementation or maintenance. Moreover, it provides an integrated test data management tool.
IT Process Automation Market
As for 2019, the process automation market was valued at $76,8 billion and is expected to grow up to $114,7 billion by 2025. The leading aspects of the market development are distributed control systems, manufacturing execution systems, and supervisory control and data acquisition. Automation in IT industry is crucial for business process management and enterprise resource planning.
The strongest growth market in the world is Asia, which is followed by the UK and Germany. The most significant IT automation companies include:
- Emerson
- ABB
- Siemens
- Honeywell
- IMI
- Rockwell Automation
- GE Digital
The opportunity to minimize errors and cut down labor costs, alongside the need for delivering excellent results, are the primary drivers of the IT process automation market.
A Final Remark
Since we have addressed the question “what is IT automation,” it’s worth mentioning over time, more and more businesses will consider it to be an indispensable part of effective company performance. IT Automation will transform into a more effective tool, implementing AI and cloud services to manage Big Data and analytics faster. If you are sure your business needs IT Automation, feel free to consult our experts. Schedule a call or drop us a line, and our professionals will contact you to help come up with the best solutions.
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