What Is Orchestrated Automation: Benefits and Examples
In the race to digital transformation, automation has quickly become the talk of the town for its ability to increase organizations’ efficiency and productivity and cut costs, but you might be less familiar with the concept of orchestrated automation. So what is orchestrated automation and why is it essential to unlocking the full benefits of automation?
What Is Orchestrated Automation?
When it comes to automation, orchestration connects multiple automated tasks to carry out entire, often complex, processes or workflows. To make these connections, orchestration must coordinate and manage a group of applications, services, and computer systems.
When done successfully, orchestrated automation takes repeatable processes, streamlines and optimizes them, and enables teams to take on more complex tasks and workflows with ease. It ensures the proper sequence of configuration management, deployment, and other processes.
In information technology, orchestration is the process of connecting and coordinating disparate tools to automate complex, multistep workflows.
- IBM
What are the Differences Between Automation and Orchestration?
Confusion between automation and orchestration is common, but in reality, the two concepts are intertwined.
When we talk about automation, we are usually referring to the practice of employing software to execute a single task without the aid of a human user. This typically gets the task done faster and with less or no error. Automation by itself operates on basic “if-then” rules and has become common in such everyday practices as routing email to a predetermined folder or integrating a web app.
In contrast, orchestration strings together multiple automated tasks over many systems to execute more complex, higher-order workflows, based on advanced logic and many moving parts. This enables processes that can:
- Coordinate multiple tasks simultaneously
- Branch out into different actions and steps
- Use the output from an automated task to make decisions
- Adapt as conditions and circumstances change
In other words, automation is a critical component of orchestration, and orchestration multiplies the value, efficiency, and productivity that automation generates for an organization.
So, how do you know when you need just automation versus the more complex orchestration? These six steps can help you determine which approach your situation requires.
1. Take the time to identify and understand the steps involved
Start with the action or process you are hoping to automate and dig into the individual steps needed to accomplish it, what triggers each step, who performs each one, and in what environment (i.e., applications, mobile devices, and databases) each one takes place.
2. Determine its complexity
Are you looking to simply automate repetitive, manual tasks and processes to streamline operations? If so, then automation should be sufficient for your needs. However, if you need to manage complex workflows and processes that involve multiple tools, systems, and dependencies, orchestration is likely what you’re looking for.
3. Evaluate the Need for Integration
Does the task or process require interaction between different systems? If so, you will need orchestration to integrate the different apps or databases as the process moves from one to the next. If not, automation could be sufficient.
4. Consider How It Needs to Make Decisions
Automation should do the job for tasks or processes that adhere to pre-defined instructions and are not required to make decisions in real time. Orchestration, on the other hand, should be pursued when dynamic adaptations and routing—driven by branching within workflows and decision-making logic—are required.
5. Evaluate the Need for Collaboration
Some tasks or processes do not require any collaboration to be completed. For these, automation, which focuses just on task execution, is likely the best fit. However, if the task or process involves cross-functional collaboration to provide visibility across a workflow or allow multiple owners to work on a single task, orchestration is likely needed to make this possible.
6. Determine the Need to Limit Human Intervention
Where compliance is involved, the less humans are involved in the process, the better, as they have a tendency to make mistakes or miss critical steps. For this reason, automation—built to totally remove human intervention from the process—is ideal for keeping your process airtight when it comes to compliance. On the other hand, orchestration, with its more complex workflows, can often require human intervention at steps where complex decisions must be made or exceptions must be made to workflows. This can possibly invite errors that compromise your compliance.
The Benefits of Orchestrated Automation
Countless businesses are finding that orchestration is well worth the extra work and investment that it requires. The benefits of orchestrated automation include:
Greater Cost Savings
Less time and effort spent on manual tasks saves money and resources and frees up IT professionals to channel their efforts into activities that add more value to the organization.
Optimized Resources
With its greater visibility, orchestrated automation empowers IT professionals to put resources where they can be used effectively and ensure that the right resources are available when needed.
Increased Efficiency
As IT teams are able to better optimize and streamline their workflows, they accelerate processes, are required less to intervene manually in these processes, and enjoy faster task execution.
Better Compliance Management
Orchestrated automation takes on the maintenance and enforcement of compliance requirements, including report generation and keeping standards in line with regulation.
Less Human Error
IT operations become more consistent and mistakes—especially those that cause downtime or vulnerabilities—are cut down as routine and repetitive tasks are automated.
Improved Scalability
IT professionals are able to ensure that infrastructure, applications, and services scale to accommodate changing workloads without burdensome manual intervention on their part.
Other proven benefits seen in IT organizations that use orchestrated automation include improved collaboration, speedier incident response, better reporting and visibility, more sound security posture, and greater ability to adapt as conditions change.
Examples of Orchestrated Automation
IT professionals strive to better react to various events, track activity across multiple environments, and make better decisions where many factors are involved. Therefore, orchestrated automation is most commonly employed to configure, coordinate, and manage a myriad of datasets, apps, computer systems, and middleware. Common examples can be seen in virtual machine creation, server provisioning, and incident management.
Businesses employ orchestrated automation across a host of different categories, including:
- Service orchestration
- Application orchestration
- Cloud orchestration
- Security orchestration
- Container orchestration
- Process orchestration
- Journey orchestration
What to Look for in Orchestrated Automation Tools?
Much of the success of your orchestration automation efforts will depend on the quality and reliability of the tools you choose. When making your choice, be sure to ask the following questions:
- Does the tool come with a robust, diverse set of integrations, especially those that match your IT environment?
- Is the user interface intuitive and easy to use?
- Can the tool scale up or down to meet your needs?
- Does the tool support diverse environments?
- Does the tool allow you to be flexible in designing workflows?
- Does it provide sufficient visibility into your workflows across multiple systems?
- Does it offer control and oversight over your automation processes?
- Does it provide sufficient security features?
- Does it offer solid error handling features?Other considerations might include version control and auditing, timely monitoring and alerting, reporting, retry mechanisms, cloud-native environments, community, and support.
