Opinion. (Moisés Rivera, Principal Account Solution Architect, Red Hat)
We live immersed in an ocean of technological buzzwords: AIOps, event-driven, observability, to name just a few. These terms, which are often shrouded in a halo of novelty and mystery, and presented as miracle solutions, can divert attention from what really matters when adopting a new technology. If we coldly analyze the meaning of each and every one of these words we can clearly see that they represent the evolution of pre-existing concepts, focused on automation and data analysis to optimize IT operations, responding to the fundamental need for efficiency and performance in a constantly evolving technological environment.
Since the cloud became popular in the late 2000s, the complexity of technological environments has increased significantly. IT teams typically manage both on-premises and cloud environments with different tools designed specifically for each. These tools typically do not offer a platform for automating tasks in hybrid environments or capabilities beyond their specific domain, making it difficult to standardize and automate routine tasks, as well as connect and scale hybrid cloud resources.
Such is the limitation that only 16% of Spanish companies have achieved total automation of their organization, far behind the United Kingdom (27%), but not far behind Germany (18%) and France (12%), according to a study carried out by Red Hat in collaboration with Censuswide. The teams are aware that this lack of standardization and automation is a very important handicap in the future of IT departments, because it directly affects the quality of service and customer experience. A situation that prevents companies from keeping pace with the adoption of new technologies (such as generative AI) or recruiting and retaining talent.
Taking into account the dizzying pace of technological evolution and how difficult it seems to choose technologies to achieve total automation in the midst of so many buzzwords, the ideal is to think about solutions that contribute to the construction of a resilient technological base. The idea is to adopt technologies that facilitate the development of an environment where innovation is driven, free from the restrictions of rigid and outdated systems. These technologies must create a foundation that adapts and scales at the pace of the business, allowing you to take advantage of opportunities and face disruptions with security and confidence.
The key is in the use of open standards that facilitate the adoption, implementation, expansion and updating of the technologies that are added to the technological stack of any organization. By using open standards technology, organizations have significant advantages such as interoperability, which facilitates the integration of systems and components from various suppliers, reducing the complexity and costs associated with development and implementation. In addition, these open standards encourage competition so that there is universal accessibility to technological specifications, which drives greater innovation, as well as the optimization of resources.
To these open standards we must add open source, which is designed so that it is accessible to everyone, meaning that everyone can see, modify and distribute the code in the way they see fit. This is code that is developed in a decentralized and collaborative manner, and depends on peer review and community production. In addition, it is usually more economical, flexible and durable than its proprietary alternatives, without lowering the quality, robustness and resilience one bit, since those in charge of its development are the communities and not a single author or a single company.
The union of open standards and open source contributes to creating a virtuous circle that has an impact on one of the major problems that organizations face, which is the risk of dependence on a specific supplier, and at the same time helps to strengthen a more robust, adaptable and efficient technological ecosystem, characterized by collaboration and specialization, for the benefit of all actors involved, which will contribute to eliminating technical debt.
But to be completely honest, technology has to be accompanied by an open culture that encourages collaboration, transparency, inclusion and adaptability to drive new ideas at all levels. And this culture must permeate the processes of the organization itself, impacting people’s way of thinking. In this way, among many other initiatives that appear when a collaborative culture is applied, for example, the company can promote an “automation first” culture, so that all projects are conceived with processes that include minimal human interaction and repetitiveness. deterministic.
We cannot forget that more and more organizations are carrying out a digital transformation, moving part of their workloads from local private data centers and virtual machines (VMs) to public clouds and containers. 89% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy while 80% have a hybrid cloud strategy. And if software, platforms, and infrastructure are distributed across public and private clouds, you need an automation platform that complies with open standards and open source, as well as an open culture and processes to enable full automation. .
Once we have managed to abstract ourselves from the noise of trends and focus on the true technological needs, then we can achieve the much desired total automation, an essential element to continue evolving the value that IT technologies bring to the business.
Opinion piece by Moisés Rivera, Principal Account Solution Architect, Red Hat
