Category Archives: Automation

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE:PD), a leader in digital operations management, today announced new capabilities to further support the digital-first orientation of businesses as they seek to meet heightened expectations for customer experiences. The new solutions inject control and logic at the event layer instantly to drive real-time behaviors and workflows. Uniquely integrating this new event management into operations automation reduces manual processes and toil, automates work, and drives best practices across distributed teams.

Along with these new features, PagerDuty also announced the general availability of Change Events in Mobile, Rundeck Actions, Round Robin Scheduling, and Probable Incident Origin, bringing a strong suite of capabilities all aimed at enhancing automated incident response to drive customer engagement and efficient operations across the modern enterprise.

Successful business operations in todays world are fully digitized. Mission-critical work is urgent, unplanned, and involves distributed teams that need to assemble and collaborate effectively when minutes of delay can mean millions in lost revenue, said Sean Scott, PagerDutys chief product officer. PagerDutys Operations Cloud connects teams, departments, and dependencies, empowering companies to master key services and manage time-critical work that impacts customer experience.

Digital services are in a constant state of change with a complex web of dependencies, which is further complicated as 72% of tech leaders report their organizations are actively accelerating their digital transformation strategies. Connecting and correlating data and signals for real-time information means ingesting signals from numerous sources, both structured and unstructured, and quickly turning the data into insights that guides actions. New PagerDuty capabilities include:

New Event Orchestration: Reduce manual processes and toil to gain operational efficiency

Event Intelligence is well-known for its noise reduction capabilities with features like intelligent alert grouping. PagerDuty now delivers the ability for teams to minimize transient noise with machine learning. Event Orchestration cuts down on businesses manual event processing with a powerful decision engine. Teams can now create custom logic to enrich, modify, and control routing based on event conditions at scale. Event Orchestration combines nested event rules for precise, targeted automation including diagnostics and remediation to reduce toil and gain operational efficiency.

Customers are increasingly looking for event orchestration capabilities that balance human-led and machine-led work in real time, said Stephen Elliot, group vice president, I&O, cloud operations and DevOps. As CIOs and CEOs are continuing to find ways to increase operational efficiency, now is the time for people to get ahead of unplanned downtime events and find ways to automate their incident response processes.

New Rundeck Cloud: Rundeck is now available as a fully managed cloud service

With Rundeck, users focus on building and running automated workflows. Rundeck Cloud manages the infrastructure for users by providing high availability, security, and elastic scalability. It also manages all patches and updates, so users always have the latest features available. In the near future, Rundeck Actions will pair with Rundeck Cloud to quickly create sophisticated automated diagnostics and remediation for your production systems.

New Service Standards: Enables account owners to configure and enforce best practice standards at scale for all their managed services.

Clearly defined and well-configured services are central to achieving team autonomy and efficient incident response. Many organizations are pivoting towards a Service Ownership model where developers and site reliability engineers take responsibility for supporting the code they deliver at every stage of the service lifecycle: they build it, ship it, and own it in production. PagerDutys Service Standards empower organizations to easily define, share, and track the criteria for service configuration according to their unique needs. Individual teams receive clear guidelines for setting up and managing services within PagerDuty.

New Change Events & Change Correlation for Mobile: Help responders solve incidents faster

Deliver machine-learning-powered change directly to on-call responders, now on mobile devices. With the latest context available at a glance and on mobile devices, responders can identify potential change correlation, triage incidents quickly, and reduce time-to-resolution while on the go.

Solutions Now Generally Available:

Rundeck Actions + Automated Diagnostics Package: Empowers responders to immediately remove critical minutes from incident response

PagerDuty Rundeck Actions help users take action to run automated diagnostics and remediate incidents directly within PagerDuty. Improve productivity by automating repeated diagnostic and remediation steps, replacing toil of manual tasks.

For more information about these new solutions and capabilities, register for PagerDutys webinar PagerDuty Fall Launch: Automate Incident Response to Accelerate Critical Work, happening Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 10:00am CST and 6:00pm CST. Or visit http://www.pagerduty.com.

About PagerDuty, Inc.

PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE:PD) is a leader in digital operations management. In an always-on world, organizations of all sizes trust PagerDuty to help them deliver a perfect digital experience to their customers, every time. Teams use PagerDuty to identify issues and opportunities in real time and bring together the right people to fix problems faster and prevent them in the future. Notable customers include Cisco, Genentech, Electronic Arts, Cox Automotive, Shopify, Zoom, DoorDash, Lululemon and more. To learn more and try PagerDuty for free, visit http://www.pagerduty.com. Follow our blog and connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. Were also hiring, visit https://www.pagerduty.com/careers/ to learn more.

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New PagerDuty Capabilities Empower Businesses to Deliver Exceptional Customer Experiences with Automated Incident Response - Business Wire

Vericreds enrollment and member management API enables GoCo to reduce new employer group setup time from weeks to days while automating key functions for benefits administrators and HR teams

NEW YORK, November 16, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vericred, the API platform powering digital quote-to-card experiences in health insurance and benefits, today announced that GoCo, a leading provider of flexible software solutions for HR, benefits, and payroll, has selected Vericreds enrollment and member management API to dramatically simplify and speed up small group benefits setup, enrollment, and administration. With the API integration, GoCo can now activate new groups for their employer customers substantially fasterwithin days instead of weekswithout manually forging individual connections between its platform and carriers to facilitate data exchange.

Simplifying Benefits Administration

GoCo is an all-in-one HR platform that streamlines time-consuming HR tasks, including benefits administration. With the integration of Vericreds API, GoCo is, for the first time, automating previously manual employee benefits enrollment tasks for its small business customers. The move will save employers and brokers time and resources as they add or update benefits for employees.

"Vericreds enrollment and member management API has helped us unlock an unprecedented level of small group benefits automation previously available only to medium and large employers," said Nir Leibovich, CEO of GoCo. "As a result, weve freed up internal resources, and made the enrollment process faster, easier, and better for employers, employees, and brokers. That is a huge competitive advantage for us during open enrollment periods and beyond."

Connectivity for Seamless Data Exchange

Vericreds API enables GoCos platform to seamlessly connect to Vericreds network of health insurance and employee benefits carriers, making the exchange of quoting, enrollment, and eligibility data between health insurance carriers, brokers, and GoCo instant. As a result, employee data is now automatically transferred to the carrier, removing manual data entry steps for the benefits administrator, and speeding up the path to enrollment for both the employee and employer. Additionally, any errors in the data are corrected before they even reach the carrier.

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"We are thrilled to be GoCos partner in blazing a new trail for the small group benefits industry and demonstrating the power that instant carrier connectivity can unleash," said Michael W. Levin, CEO and co-founder of Vericred. "The GoCo platform is truly maximizing its integration with Vericreds enrollment and member management API to deliver tangible value to its users."

Vericred Powers Benefit Sync Dashboard

GoCos Benefit Sync Dashboard puts the power into the hands of the HR and benefits administrators, giving them the tools to craft and automate their preferred workflows. By integrating with Vericreds API, GoCos dashboard now provides users with end-to-end visibility into the entire enrollment transaction, including each stage of the transaction when its with the carrier.

About Vericred

Vericred is the way health insurance carriers and employee benefits providers connect with new technology partners to deliver seamless quote-to-card consumer experiences. We are not the websites or apps you use to choose a plan or find a doctor. We are the infrastructure. We are the pipes that simplify the complex exchange of quoting, enrollment and eligibility data between carriers and the technology partners responsible for delivering health and employee benefits to hundreds of millions of Americans everyday. Our APIs transmit billions of data points between InsurTech and insurance carriers, powering digital distribution across the insurance industry. Come join the community of insurance geeks creating a seamless digital quote-to-card experience. Visit http://www.vericred.com.

About GoCo

GoCo.io is modern HR, benefits, and payroll, built with flexibility and ease of use in mind. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, GoCos mission is to automate manual HR tasks and empower HR to make work a better place.

Unlike other HRIS platforms, GoCo is built to be flexible enough to support existing processes, policies, and providers, so that SMBs dont have to change the way they work just to adopt a modern HR system. For more information, visit http://www.goco.io.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211116005830/en/

Contacts

Media:

VericredZach WallensCommunications Manager212-235-5299zwallens@vericred.com

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GoCo Selects Vericred to Bring Groundbreaking Automation to Small Group Benefits Enrollment - Yahoo Finance

Over the past 3 months, 5 analysts have published their opinion on Brooks Automation (NASDAQ:BRKS) stock. These analysts are typically employed by large Wall Street banks and tasked with understanding a companys business to predict how a stock will trade over the upcoming year.

According to 5 analyst offering 12-month price targets in the last 3 months, Brooks Automation has an average price target of $138.4 with a high of $155.00 and a low of $120.00.

Below is a summary of how these 5 analysts rated Brooks Automation over the past 3 months. The greater the number of bullish ratings, the more positive analysts are on the stock and the greater the number of bearish ratings, the move negative analysts are on the stock

This average price target has increased by 11.43% over the past month.

Analysts work in banking and financial systems and typically specialize in reporting for stocks or defined sectors. Analysts may attend company conference calls and meetings, research company financial statements, and communicate with insiders to publish analyst ratings for stocks. Analysts typically rate each stock once per quarter.

Some analysts will also offer forecasts for metrics like growth estimates, earnings, and revenue to provide further guidance on stocks. Investors who use analyst ratings should note that this specialized advice comes from humans and may be subject to error.

This article was generated by Benzingas automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.

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Where Brooks Automation Stands With Analysts - Benzinga - Benzinga

The business ecosystem has been dynamic with changing government policies and COVID-19. (Image: Reuters)

By Akash Kishore

The MSMEs in India contribute to almost half of the industrial output and a fifth of the GDP to the Indian economy, notwithstanding the hurdles they face in the business. The government initiatives Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and Make in India have encouraged these MSMEs to expand and flourish.

Today, technology is the key element for the survival and growth of the business. The usage of technology at all levels is aiding the creation of a level playing field for all companies, big or small. Technology has created an edge for industries and allowed them to grow business exponentially. It plays a pivotal role in making customer demands hassle-free, automating the production line and in supply chain management. The technology can be extended to customer acquisition and relationship management and marketing. MSMEs, therefore, need to up-skill themselves to scale and grow their business. The six crore MSMEs widely use technology like automation, but even that is at a very low rate of 12 per cent. It hinders their ability to compete and survive in the changing market conditions.

Automation, to put it simply, allows tasks to happen automatically. A staggering number of tasks across many industry verticals are repetitive and can be easily automated. It is not to replace human labour but to augment it by offloading repetitive mundane tasks to machines. While it may raise alarm bells, especially in a human resource-intensive country like ours, it brings different advantages: improved production rate, efficient and optimised resources, consistent output, superior quality, better visibility and overall reduced cost of operations.

Automation had its major uptick in manufacturing. However, the focus has been towards fixed or hard automation instead of programmable and flexible automation. Since then, automation has evolved, especially with artificial intelligence and machine learning. It helps make processes more agile, resilient and optimised. Today, automation has touched all aspects of the industry like supply chain management, automotive, construction, datacentres, oil and gas, chemical industry, mining, harbour, food & beverages and power management.

While automation has its benefits, certain aspects of automation are the primary hindrance to adoption by MSME. The upfront investment, lack of knowledge and skills top this list. A lot of MSMEs face dilemmas regarding what scale of automation they should adopt. It depends upon a step-by-step approach wherein companies can plan the cash flow, upskill and realise investment.

The business ecosystem has been dynamic with changing government policies and COVID-19. COVID-19 has been an eye-opener as organisations have realised the fragility of the ecosystem with the sudden lockdowns and resultant economic downturn. It has also forced MSMEs to rethink future-proof technologies like integrated automation. Integrated automation ensures that the end-to-end business process is automatically driven across physical boundaries and seamlessly expanded into new-age digital channels.

Take, for example, the procurement of raw materials in any business. The complex process involves managing a large number of documents, suppliers and other elements. It is also prone to inefficiencies creeping in and certain vital details being missed. Integrated automation in raw material with AI / ML-enabled technology can dramatically transform communication and collaboration by reducing and consolidating communication channels. It can optimise stock management and vendor management. IoT-enabled integrated automation and visibility of capacities in real-time will help sourcing of material in JIT (Just in Time) methodology, thereby improving the overall bottom line.

The digitally-enabled automation platform will help the quick discovery of multiple aspects like price, quantity, quality and lead time for any raw material across physical borders. There are dozens of MSMEs that have started adopting these systems.

Moreover, this is only the beginning. With time, this automation will become more advanced and a lot more capable, with the end goal of not replacing humans but rather empowering them like the next tool in your toolbox.

Transforming MSMEs into smart manufacturing units is the need of the hour, as connected devices and sensors offer granular visibility that can drive better decision-making capabilities for businesses.

It is expected that Industry 4.0 will be fuelled with new-age business models that are driven by real-time data analysed by AI and ML and feed into the digitally-enabled automated process of MSMEs. It will result in production efficiency, lower time to market and most importantly, better customer service.

(The author is Founder and Director, Dhatu Online. Views expressed are personal.)

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How automation can contribute to better sourcing of raw materials for MSMEs - Financial Express

Advancements in machine vision drive industrial automation and push the boundaries of what is feasible. Yet one limitation of machine vision could long not be overcome, which seriously restrained the range of tasks that could be automated. This changes now.

Andrea Pufflerova, PR Specialist | Photoneo

The market offers a number of different machine vision technologies and it may seem difficult to choose the right technology for a specific application. Each 3D sensing approach has its advantages as well as weak points and there might be no optimal solution that would satisfy all needs.

While each technology is suitable for different applications, high parameters of one or another method always come with certain trade-offs. Yet there is one major limitation that all 3D sensing approaches have been struggling with and none of them has been able to overcome it - until a novel technology has been introduced.

Before discussing this challenge in more detail, lets have a look first at a brief overview of machine vision technologies that are available on the market.

2D machine vision systems provide a flat, two-dimensional image, which is perfectly sufficient for simple applications such as barcode reading, character recognition, or dimension checking. However, they cannot recognize object shapes or measure distance in the Z dimension.

More advanced machine vision systems are based on 3D sensing technologies, which provide a three-dimensional point cloud of precise X, Y, and Z coordinates. These methods are suitable for a wide range of robot applications such as robot guidance, bin picking, dimensioning, quality control, detection of surface defects, and an infinite number of other tasks.

3D sensing technologies can be classified into two main groups - Time-of-Flight (ToF) methods and triangulation-based methods. ToF technologies measure the time during which a light signal emitted from a light source hits the scanned object and returns back to the sensor. Triangulation-based methods are based on observing a scene from multiple perspectives and measuring the angles of the triangles spanned between the scene and the observers, from which the exact 3D coordinates can be computed.

Here is an overview of major 3D sensing technologies:

Time-of-flight methods

Triangulation-based methods

Laser triangulation (or profilometry)

Photogrammetry

Stereo vision (passive and active)

Structured light (single frame, multiple frames)

Novel Parallel Structured Light

The great challenge of 3D machine vision technologies resides in scanning objects in motion and the ever-persistent trade-off between quality and speed.

But why is this task such a great challenge?

To get a whole 3D snapshot of a scene, some methods require the movement of the camera or the scanned object, while others do not.

The structured light method, for example, encodes 3D information directly in the scene by emitting one or more coded structured light patterns. However, to achieve high accuracy and resolution, structured light systems need to use multiple frames with different structured patterns so the scene needs to be static at the moment of acquisition. Otherwise, the 3D output would be distorted.

On the other hand, ToF area sensing systems are well suited for dynamic applications as they are very fast and provide nearly real-time processing. However, they fall short in their ability to deliver high resolution at moderate noise levels.

Compromising between quality and speed seemed to be an insuperable challenge as none of the existing 3D sensing methods has been able to overcome their limitations related to the acquisition process and data processing. This problem has been only recently resolved by the novel technology of Parallel Structured Light. How does the technology ultimately overcome the challenge of scanning in motion?

High-quality 3D reconstruction of a moving scene enabled by the Parallel Structured Light technology. Source: Photoneo

As the name suggests, the technology uses structured light in combination with a proprietary CMOS image sensor with a mosaic pixel pattern. As can be seen in the animation below, the sensor is divided into super-pixel blocks, which are further divided into subpixels.

Mosaic CMOS image sensor. Source: Photoneo

The laser coming from a projector is on the entire time, while the individual pixels are repeatedly turned on and off within a single exposure window - the pixel modulation in the sensor happens simultaneously, hence the name Parallel Structured Light.

And this is what makes the technology so revolutionary. It requires only a single shot of the scene to acquire multiple virtual images so it so to say freezes the scene during the acquisition stage. The result is a high-quality 3D reconstruction of a moving scene without motion artifacts.

For comparison, conventional structured light systems require a scene to remain still during the acquisition process because they capture projector-encoded patterns sequentially.

The Parallel Structured Light technology thus overcomes the challenge of 3D scanning in motion, offering the high resolution of multiple-frame structured light systems and the speed of single-frame ToF systems.

Because the Parallel Structured Light is the first and only technology that enables a high-quality 3D area scanning of objects in motion, it opens up completely new spheres for automation.

Standard robotic tasks such as bin picking, palletization, depalletization, object sorting, machine tending, quality control, inspection, metrology, non-destructive harvesting, and an infinite number of other applications can now be pushed to the next level. Until recently, their automation was limited to static scenes - now the Parallel Structured Light technology shifts the paradigm and enables the recognition, localization, and handling of objects in motion, immensely decreasing cycle times and latency.

Scanning of boxes moving on a conveyor belt. Source: Photoneo

Thanks to this, the technology also greatly benefits hand-eye applications, where a 3D camera is directly attached to the robotic arm. While standard vision systems require the robot to stop its movement to trigger a scan, the Parallel Structured Light technology enables the capture of objects even while the robot moves.

Scanning the human body or measuring the volume of shapeless and deformable moving objects - tasks that were unfeasible not such a long time ago are possible to do now. The Parallel Structured Light technology provides great versatility, uplifts automated lines, and enables tasks that were not possible to do with conventional robots or their programming, such as smarter cooperation of humans and robots in collaborative robotics, faster and more accurate picking, or unloading and loading of moving objects.

A scan of the human leg can be used for medical purposes. Source: Photoneo

The company behind the novel technology is Slovakia-based Photoneo, a developer of smart automation solutions that are based on a combination of outstanding, original 3D machine vision and robot intelligence.

The technology is implemented in their 3D camera MotionCam-3D, making the device the highest-resolution and highest-accuracy area-scan 3D camera especially suitable for dynamic scenes. The camera can capture objects moving up to 144 kilometers per hour, providing 20 fps and a point cloud resolution of up to 2 Mpx with a high level of 3D detail. An industrial-grade quality is ensured by thermal calibration and IP65 rating, thanks to which the camera is water and dust resistant and provides stable and reliable performance in various working conditions. Together with effective resistance to vibrations and high performance in demanding light settings, these features enable the camera to be implemented in challenging industrial environments.

MotionCam-3D powered by the Parallel Structured Light technology. Source: Photoneo

The five models of the camera cover a large scanning range to enable the capture of items as small as a cup of tea as well as objects of the size of a EUR-pallet. High versatility is ensured by three different scanning modes for various needs and application requirements - a mode for capturing dynamic scenes, another one for static scenes, and one for creating 2D images only.

The demand for smart automation solutions is more urgent than ever and increases across all industries. Logistics and e-commerce are only two of many examples of this trend. Advanced automation solutions come as a silver bullet to solve insufficient productivity and a shrinking labor force. The automation of picking, checking, and sorting of boxes, for instance, powered by a combination of powerful machine vision technology and robot intelligence helps boost productivity and efficiency, optimize processes, reduce costs, save time, and significantly eliminate the risk of injuries.

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Dorner's 2200 Series Precision Move Pallet Systems are ideal for assembly automation. With features such as an innovative timing belt conveyor design and industry best pallet transfers, they get your product to the exact location, at the exact time and in the exact position it needs to be.They are now available with new options such as heavy load corner modules with 150 lb. capacity and 180 degree tight transfer corners for compact loops.

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Machine Vision of Tomorrow: How 3D Scanning in Motion Revolutionizes Automation | RoboticsTomorrow - Robotics Tomorrow

The robots are taking over--and that's not necessarily abad thing.

Orders of robotic machinery have increase by 37 percent year-over-year, according to the Association for Advancing Automation(A3). The reason: There just aren't enough workers to fill jobs."With labor shortages throughout manufacturing, logistics, and virtually every industry, companies of all sizes are increasingly turning to robotics and automation to stay productive and competitive,"Jeff Burnstein, president of A3, said in a press release. The trade association has seen a particular increase in automation in theautomotive, agricultural, construction, electronics, food processing, and warehousing industries.

Automation can help small-and medium-sized businesses cope with labor shortages, especially when robotics help to streamline otherwise inefficient tasks. Research even showsthat automation can have a positive impact on work environments. The journal Technology and Society found that automation and artificial intelligencecan improve worker productivity and decrease stress, for instance.

However, the negative consequences are something to note. In that same study, which was conducted bygraduate researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University, the authors found that increased automation canreduce worker satisfaction and have a negative impact on worker health. Thenegative impact of automation and A.I.on health and satisfaction may be due to increased surveillance and a reduced sense of meaning at work.

Increased use of automation can help businesses cope with worker shortages, but to prevent them from alienating existing employees, leaders should consider all their pros and cons,the researchers say. When used to complement workload demands (taking on more menial tasksor streamlining more arduous tasks, like hiring), A.I. and robotics can be a solid solution.

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Businesses Are Increasingly Relying on Automation to Compensate for Labor Shortages - Inc.

Automationpervades most other contemporary IT trends. Cloudand cloud-native? Youre talking about automation.SecurityandDevSecOps? Again, youre talking about automation.Talentandculture? Yep, youre still talking about automation.

IT is both in the midst of its own automation transformation and also an indispensable catalyst of organization-wide automation strategies. Its actually difficult to exaggerate the role that automation is playing in businesses and industries of all kinds today. (The automate all the thingsmemehas a kernel of truth to it.)

[ How can automation free up more staff time for innovation? Get the free eBook:Managing IT with Automation. ]

Automations reach extends beyond any single industry, business function, job role, or technology. Lets dig into 11 statistics (and then some) that reflect the outsized influence of automation.

60 percent:Automation-related fears about job security are very real. In aPwC surveyof 32,500 workers worldwide, roughly six out of every 10 (61 percent) of respondents said theyre worried that automation (of all types) is putting many jobs at risk in the future.

[ Also read:Automation vs. IT jobs: 3 ways leaders can address layoff fears. ]

X = Y:Bet you didnt think wed break out the algebra so soon, but here we are:X=Y, where X represents time spent on current tasks at work by humans andYrepresents time spent on current tasks at work by machines. Those numbers will be more or less equal in 2025, according tothe World Economic Forum. Today, people still spend more time on those same tasks than machines.

The organizations Future of Jobs report notes that this balance wont be distributed evenly, however, and work that requires critical thinking and problem-solving will still favor humans: Algorithms and machines will be primarily focused on the tasks of information and data processing and retrieval, administrative tasks, and some aspects of traditional manual labor. The tasks where humans are expected to retain their comparative advantage include managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating, and interacting.

97 million vs. 85 million:The same World Economic Forum report estimates that 85 million jobs will be displaced as a result of that shift in the division of work, with more of it moving to machines. That said, the report also predicts the creation of around 97 million new roles as a result of the same shift toward automation.

77 percent:Terms likereskillingandupskillingmay sound buzzwordy, but the practices they represent are serious: The capabilities required for many of those new roles likely dont exist today. The PwC survey found that most people are willing to learn and then some: 77 percent of respondents said theyre ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, and 40 percent of people reported successfully improving their digital skills during the pandemic.

1/4:While machine learning (ML) and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) underpin a lot of IT automation discussion, its still relatively early days for this (big) category. Approximately one-quarter of respondents in OReillysAI Adoption in the Enterprise 2021report indicated mature AI initiatives, defined in this context as having revenue-generating AI in production. That rate basically remains unchanged compared with OReillys 2020 report. OReilly received three times the number of responses with the same amount of promotion, something the firm attributes to growing interest in AI overall.

[ Related read:Why automation progress stalls: 3 hidden culture challenges. ]

35 percent:Thats the percentage of organizations in the OReilly report that are actively evaluating AI, meaning theyre running a trial or proof of concept. Another 26 percent said theyre considering AI but havent started any formal work. Just 13 percent said theyre not using AI now and arent considering doing so in the foreseeable future.

1:The #1 challenge for these organizations is hiring: There arent enough people with skills in AI, machine learning, and data science. You may think youve heard that line before, but a lack of AI skills only took over the top spot this year, unseating culture challenges (which dropped to number four, suggesting that people are starting to get used to the idea of increasing automation).

That shortage has been predicted for several years; were finally seeing it, writes report author Mike Loukides, VP of content strategy at OReilly Media.

58 percent:The pandemic appears to have sped up automation initiatives rather than slow them down: A 2020 global executivesurvey conducted by Deloittefound a 58 percent increase in intelligent automation initiatives underway compared with the previous year.

73 percent:That meant that nearly three out of four execs (73 percent) said they had an intelligent automation initiative in Deloittes 2020 survey.

Intelligent automation whats that?Definitions of intelligent automation vary, but the term usually refers to a combination of technologies, including but not limited to robotic process automation (RPA), low-code or no-code tools, and AI technologies. The intelligent part usually reflects that technologies like RPA cant learn on their own like a machine learning algorithm, for example.

88 percent:IT automation isnt just about AI and ML it also includes the extensive, expanding roles that automation plays in modern environments. Think in terms of infrastructure as code, configuration management, security automation, container orchestration, and more. Kubernetes is now everyday IT jargon for that very reason. In Red Hat's2021 State of Kubernetes Securityreport, 88 percent of the IT pros surveyed said their organizations are using Kubernetes, with 74 percent using it in production.

74 percent:The State of Kubernetes Security report also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents (74 percent) have adopted DevSecOps. A full 25 percent of organizations said their DevSecOps implementation is in an advanced stage that integrates and automates security throughout their software pipeline.

[ Want to learn more about building and deploying Kubernetes Operators? Get the free O'Reilly eBooks: Kubernetes Operators: Automating the Container Orchestration Platform and Kubernetes patterns for designing cloud-native apps. ]

[ How can automation free up more staff time for innovation? Get the free eBook:Managing IT with Automation. ]

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Automation by the numbers: 11 stats to know - The Enterprisers Project

Enabling developers with infrastructure automation

Being first to market with new and improved applications and services is how successful organizations grow and differentiate business offerings. Continuous software delivery means everything is fluid and constantly changed to enable the speed and agility required to ensure applications deliver on increasingly higher consumer satisfaction expectations.

Everything released and rolled out needs to be evaluated and updated frequently with new capabilities and features added as requirements change. DevOps, continuous integration and delivery practices play a growing part in the streamlining of software pipelines and accelerating software releases, however for enterprises, the infrastructure supporting the pipelines remains siloed, provisioned (potentially, multiple times) at each stage of the software delivery pipeline.

While infrastructure remains a skill intensive, stage based practice, there is no greater inhibitor to pipeline execution speed and agility and the requirement to scale DevOps to meet the needs of the business.

The result is that IT organizations cannot keep pace and struggle to provide development and testing teams with the infrastructure environments they need, while maintaining security, compliance and efficiency. To help achieve speed and control, many DevOps-focused companies are turning to infrastructure automation. The goal of such an approach is to give DevOps teams access to the environments they need in a timely manner, all while maintaining control and oversight of costs and governance.

The way businesses operate today, DevOps needs production environments available immediately. Developers cannot afford to wait days or longer when starting new projects. Some businesses try to address the challenge by building automated scripts to set up environments.

The problem is that automated scripts are typically custom, hand-coded and require increasingly scarce skills. When changes to environments are needed, custom scripts need the same high level of skills to understand, evaluate, change, and test environments taking crucial time from pipeline execution.

DevOps teams need instant access to infrastructure. The solution must be, application pipeline centric, automated, on-demand and self-service. It must be a platform that not only delivers and manages environments throughout the pipelines but integrate with existing infrastructure tools, subsuming what they create to ensure enterprises meet the demands of the business without inhibiting application software development innovation.

The role of immutable infrastructure

Enabling developers with infrastructure automation is the concept of reusable automation and immutable infrastructure. The concept for immutable infrastructure is to build the infrastructure components to an exact set of specifications. If a change to a specification is required, then a whole new set of infrastructure is provisioned based on the updated requirements, and the previous infrastructure is taken out of service as it is obsolete.

How does that play into automating infrastructure for DevOps teams? Continuous delivery uses automation to make deployments routine and repeatable. To achieve this, delivery is built on the concept of versioning and automation to push deployments to variable environments on a development pipeline.

Immutable infrastructure comes into play in that IT-heavy infrastructure chores, such as implementing updates and installing patches, are eliminated. If an infrastructure element needs an update or must be replaced, the old elements are replaced by new entities that have already made these changes and been incorporated, tested and verified.

Bottom line: Reusable immutable building blocks make it easier to deliver the resources developers really need.

Addressing governance

Infrastructure automation should be used to ensure governance. However, traditional cloud governance approaches are limited by features, with infrastructure automation achieved through complex scripting. This results in the automation becoming a major maintenance challenge and a time commitment. With multi-cloud environments, complexity multiples.

The smart approach is to focus infrastructure automation on managing governance across common cloud resources. Putting infrastructure automation in the hands of DevOps practitioners does not mean relinquishing governance control, but ensures corporate compliance is maintained and enforced with policies controlling usage, security and cost. This prevents cloud sprawl without slowing down development cycles.

Summing up

Meeting todays growing DevOps infrastructure needs is a time-consuming task for IT organizations. It slows down every stage of the application development pipeline. The need is for a solution that provides developers and DevOps practitioners access to the cloud infrastructure and application environments they need on demand. This is accomplished using an Environments as a service (EaaS) platform, accessible through a GUI portal, command line interface and existing CI/CD tools.

A modern environment automation platform must be designed for all team members of a DevOps practice to automate the requesting, provisioning and lifecycle management of infrastructure environments. The platform must integrate without impacting efficiency or limiting innovation. It must deliver environments on-demand with self-service automation capabilities and oversee and enforce governance compliance. This solution is the answer to organizations seeking to streamline the continuous software delivery pipeline for application development, testing and release to production.

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Enabling Developers with Infrastructure Automation - DevOps.com

Millennium Dome (Photo by JR Harris on Unsplash)

"Automation is key," says Jaime Everard, Business Systems Manager at engineering consultancy Buro Happold. With 1,900 employees and 26 global locations, the 40-year-old company has delivered prestige projects such as the iconic Millenium Dome in London, the Atlanta Falcons Mercedes-Benz Stadium with its distinctive retractable roof, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and many others. Continued evolution of its IT systems is a key part of its ongoing growth. Everard says:

We don't want our engineers spending loads of time filling in data into the system. We'd like the system to be able to automate that as much as possible. Because ultimately, we prefer our people to be out there working with our customers.

I spoke to Everard in the run-up to this week's Experience4U virtual event, organized by Unit4, where he'll chat to Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller about automation in professional services. Buro Happold has been a Unit4 customer since 2004 and our conversation touched on the various ways in which its use of the platform has expanded in recent years to streamline processes and reporting. One notable aspect of this is that the London-based firm has been able to pursue these innovations while still keeping its ERP instance on-prem, rather than having to upgrade to a version that runs in the cloud. Everard doesn't rule out going to the cloud in the future, but it's not a priority right now. He explains:

It's not that we're not going to adopt a Unit4 cloud solution going forwards. It's just getting the timing right for that. At the moment, we do have rack space in a data center, so we are able to sufficiently service all of our global people, in terms of getting access to the system. We've got a great internal infrastructure team that enables that. We use tools such as Citrix, etc, but obviously moving towards a more web-based architecture, which Unit4 provides.

We're almost providing our own cloud, because we just access our services through the data center, and we operate a global WAN to make sure that all of our offices are connected [to each other], and connected to our data center.

Instead of upgrading the back-end, the focus has been on adding new ways to access it. A big part of the automation story has been a move towards 'headless' ERP. This means accessing the back-end system via a conversational layer in Buro Happold's case, the Microsoft Teams messaging app rather than going directly to the ERP application (the 'head') to see data or use functions. This was made possible with Unit4's Wanda chatbot technology, which the firm became the first on-prem customer to start using. It allows users to get information or complete actions directly from the Teams message stream, while the AI technology behind Wanda takes care of communicating with the back-end system. Everard elaborates:

People engaging with the systems having to go around different systems to do different tasks is quite time-consuming, especially when you're an engineer out there on the customer side. The great thing that Teams gives us, and being able to use Wanda through Teams, is a commonality of interface. They didn't even know necessarily what ERP system they're connected to. All they know is, it's doing what they need it to do on a daily basis, whether that's entering your absence, whether it's approving a task, approving an invoice. It can all be done through a common interface, and we do so much now within Teams.

The team has automated a range of different tasks using Wanda across HR and finance tasks, even including setting up and filling in timesheets. Teams is also useful for tracking collaboration around documents in SharePoint. Actions are much less likely to get missed when Wanda sends an alert than when a user receives an email reminder. Everard explains:

If Wanda is prompting you and saying, you've got an invoice to approve, it comes up as what they call a card. You can see the information in Teams, and you just simply click approve, reject, or update later. [Unit4 has] also built in quite a clever web app, which takes you to a very simplified version of the Unit4 tool, so that you can see the invoice, the receipt, all of those things, within there. Again, that's all linked up through Wanda and Teams.

All of these workflows have been built by Everard's team using Unit4's visual workflow builder, making sure that each workflow conforms to the company's internal authorization matrix. The visualization means that users can also track the status of outstanding actions in the workflow at any given time. He explains:

You build it as a diagram, and then you apply the rules into the steps in the diagram. So you can see, as you're building it, where it's going to go, who it's going to go to, how it's going to work. That also benefits the user, because it translates into a nice diagram or map, so they can see who it's with at any point in time.

Workflow flexibility was also useful when implementing Unit4's mobile-first travel and expense app. This had to accommodate very strict regional exchange rate rules in countries such as Poland, where the team implemented a connector to import the correct rates. Automating expense claims has made a big impact, especially with the advent of COVID and the switch to remote working. He explains:

Previously, it was just a matter of taking pictures [of receipts], and then when you got back in the office, you had to complete it within the system. But now you can do everything through the app, including taking pictures of receipts. We even have receipt recognition switched on, so in many cases, it will detect on receipt, what type of expense it is ...

We get the information in terms of approvals to the right people, they can see the receipt, they can say yes, I approve it's within policy, etc. So that's definitely been a big plus for us, adopting expenses. Good job we did do it before COVID. We finished it about three or four months before COVID. We've adopted that globally.

The team is now rolling out Unit4 Procure-to-Pay (P2P), which has just gone live in India and will roll out elsewhere over the coming months. This too will bring much-needed automation, as he explains:

That will bring a great deal of automation, and also will mean a lot of manual process will hopefully go the way of the dinosaur ... At the moment we have an invoice comes in the door, and our AP team have to code that in. With P2P, they won't have to do that anymore. The invoice will come in the door, and we'll be able to match it and then pay our suppliers off the back of that.

There's plenty else going on across the firm's business systems. It recently implemented a new image library, and has just adopted the Cornerstone learning management system. Meanwhile, there's a big project in hand to transition the Deltek project management platform to a new version.

Data analytics is another area where Buro Happold has made big strides in recent years. A dedicated internal team of three PowerBI experts have developed the internal data warehouse to provide curated data models to various parts of the organization, which allows people to generate their own reports. Doing this internally rather than relying on outside consultants "means we're delivering, first time, what the stakeholder wants," says Everard. It's proven its worth, particularly when navigating the uncertainties of the pandemic, as he explains:

That has given our leadership real visibility into what's happening. During the pandemic, frankly, if we didn't have those tools, our decision making would have been impacted.

It's really helped our decision making, so we're continually growing our offering. It's probably our most in-demand area.

To read diginomica stories from Unit4's X4U digital experience visit our Experience4U 2021 event hub. The virtual event runs from November 16-17th and sessions will be available afterwards to view on-demand. Click here to see the agenda and register now.

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Experience4U - how engineering consultancy Buro Happold is automating around its on-prem ERP - Diginomica

Youve invested time, energy, and money. Youve done your market research, created a bullet-proof business plan, launched, and taken off.

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Now you want your business to really soar, so youre grappling with what has become the holy grail of business marketing: automation. Its supposed to be the way to optimize your teams efficiency, target prospects and customers, and increase revenue. But your business is flatlining.

Wheres the upward trajectory you were expecting to see?

Automation sounds like a brilliant way to boost your marketing efforts. It can allow your team to spend more time doing what they were hired to do, and less time bogged down in grunt work. It can target customers via automated messaging across multiple platforms and enhance your ability to nurture leads and close sales. But dont assume that simply automating your marketing processes will get you where you want to go. Heres what you need to keep in mind.

Automation doesnt translate to hands-off. Automation demands constant scrutiny and adjustment. You need to ensure that your data remains up-to-date, and that all leads and marketing efforts are being productively leveraged.

That means allocating appropriate resources i.e. dedicated team members to ensure this is done effectively. It does not mean you can stop investing in other strategies in your marketing efforts. Marketing automation tools arent meant to replace your marketing plan: theyre meant to augment it.

Dont throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. Be strategic. Find the gap between what you already have and what you require to achieve your marketing goals.:

Zero in on the specific tasks that could benefit from automation, and research the tools that will do the job for you.

For example, if you favor a particular tool for project management, but you dont have a handy way to create video recordings within it, consider filling the gap with third-party APIs to integrate this function into your marketing system.

Build a Chrome extension using the APIs from these tools to plug the features in. Its a worthwhile investment because its a proven customer connection booster.

Its also about the budget. Look at the opportunity costs. Automating your WordPress development could perhaps free up a lot more bandwidth and establish higher ROI at your end than automating sales outreach. Invest wisely.

Every business has unique needs. You cant expect a single tool to satisfy all your specific marketing requirements. Once youve come up with a definitive shortlist of your needs, investigate the app options that most closely align with what youre looking for, and invest in them. Be prepared to do some custom-tailoring to get a fit thats just right for your business.

Or, if youre using multiple tools for a project, you can easily build a master app with APIs that can bring all this information together in one place.

Automation can be a great tool. But if its not used appropriately, it can actually put the brakes on business growth.

Todays consumers are smart: they know when theyre being sold. Automation systems may tempt you to flood your target market with material because they make it so easy! Resist the temptation. Consumers want content that consistently informs, engages, and recognizes them as individuals with specific needs. They dont want to be a number on a mass-mailing list.

Without question, automation systems can be invaluable in identifying and nurturing good leads. Ideally, they can help guide prospects down the marketing funnel or at least, bring them part-way. Research shows that businesses that practice lead nurturing enjoy 50% more conversions than those that dont. It all adds up: lead nurturing is about providing useful information, creating brand awareness, and building trust. Bingo.

But those automation-generated warm leads may have cooled off by the time your team actually makes contact with them. If the person-to-person interaction necessary to close the deal is delayed too long, chances are youll miss out on conversions.

When it comes to leads, temperature trumps numbers. Its all about striking when the iron is hot. Dont rely on marketing automation systems however effective they may be at sussing out leads to keep those leads interested and guide them down the sales funnel. These systems require constant monitoring by a dedicated team to be truly effective. This ensures that you can effectively engage with prospects when it really matters.

To ensure successful engagement, you need to know precisely who you need to connect with and how you can do it most effectively. Automation can save time and effort when it comes to targeted communication.

But its money down the drain if you dont choose the appropriate medium. You want to meet prospects and customers where they are. That means knowing who they are, and which communication channels theyre most likely to use. In other words, dont limit your automation efforts to email if your target demographic is millennials.

Be strategic in your selection of options that you offer potential customers to engage with you. Obviously, the more you can offer, the better. Businesses can take either a multichannel or omnichannel approach to building customer relationships. Multichannel customer communication offers a variety of communication channels including everything from live chat to SMS to social media. This allows customers to connect with you on multiple platforms.

The omnichannel approach also uses multiple platforms, with one notable difference: all the communication channels are integrated into one single system meaning that no matter the platform the consumer is using, you can engage them. For example, your customer may reach out to your support team via Facebook, then decide to continue the conversation via email. Theyll stay connected.

And ultimately, thats the number one priority: to keep the conversation going. Thats what automated systems allow you to do in ways that conventional marketing simply cant. But it takes work.

Be sure that you have a clear understanding of your target audience, your marketing goals, and the steps that can most effectively bridge the two. Be prepared to consistently produce compelling content that both engages your audience and provides them with valuable information. Determine when and how to release that content most effectively to prospects and customers on their buying journey.

The right content sent to the right audience at the right time: thats a recipe for success, all courtesy of automation.

Updated on Nov 15, 2021, 4:32 pm

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Why Is Automation Not Working For Your Business? - ValueWalk