Keeping Up with IT Operations in Highly Dynamic Enterprise Environments through Automation

The Challenge

One of the largest MSOs was looking for help to jumpstart their stalled automation initiatives.  In addition, these initiatives required access to servers and network devices in over 80 data centers across the U.S., but the reach of existing tools were not keeping pace with the organizational demand for automation, the scope of which included over 4,000 servers and 20,000 network devices.  They customer was looking for a way to accelerate automation progress across multiple organizations.

The Solution

pureIntegration deployed processes and thought leadership to help build, upgrade and stabilize an automation framework that would support long term goals of the company.

The first step was to institute an initiative intake process to help prioritize work effort that returned the highest ROI (Return on Investment) for key stakeholders.  Directors from each division (Voice, Video, and Data) reviewed the latest progress on each initiative and helped prioritize what was on the horizon.  As new automation initiatives were requested, their values were estimated, and they were added to the intake process.  In addition, regular calls with multiple organizations were held to provide visibility, track progress and gain user adoption.  This maintained organization momentum towards broadening the scope of automation, and spotlighted those groups that were ahead of, or behind, the curve.

The Measurable Outcome

pureIntegration's effort has positioned the MOS's automation program for continued success.  In fact, pureIntegration has been able to fund the program year after year with the ROI savings associated with newly developed capabilities.

Over 95% of the network devices are currently being managed through MicroFocus Network Automation, as well as 4,000+ servers in MicroFocus Server Automation supporting Voice, Video and Data operations.  By using common dashboard, reporting and management interfaces for both server and network node management, the potential for information conflicts and project delays were reduced.  pureIntegration took the lead on upgrading and stabilizing the existing MicroFocus Server Automation environment, and developed numerous server compliance and audit checks.  Prior to this initiative, these types of audits were manually run, and labor intensive, but have been reduced from 8 hours to 10 minutes.

These types of reductions, along with the others gained from automation, led to increased resource efficiency and head count reduction of the system administrators across all departments.