We’re big fans of automation here at Advizex and for good reason. We’re also big fans of VMware and all they offer, so it follows that we’ll want to talk about VMware vRealize Automation (vRA).
Part of the VMware vRealize Suite, vRealize Automation, the cloud management platform (CMP) and automation engine, is its star player. And if you haven’t seen the vRealize Suite in the last couple of years, you’ll want to take a fresh look – it’s a completely new platform. VMware re-architected and improved upon every aspect.
Wherever you are on your automation journey, vRealize has something worth exploring. Plus, if you’re already using VMware’s vSphere, it includes licensing for vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), the orchestration engine that powers vRA. If you don’t currently use VMware, vRA is also available as a SaaS offering.
What are Automation and Orchestration?
Automation: the execution of a task in a consistent, repeatable fashion with little to no manual work required.
Orchestration: the ability to combine multiple automated tasks into one cohesive workflow, often integrating multiple disparate endpoints to achieve a specific outcome.
VMware vRealize Automation Empowers Your Business.
We like VMware vRA for so many reasons. In a nutshell, it’s a mature, cloud-agnostic provisioning engine with XaaS capabilities built in.
It comes with vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager which eases the burden of managing the platform. It automates platform updates, certificates changes when needed, and can take snapshots of the entire environment. It’ll even help you move code between multiple environments, like between a dev and a production environment. As a modern platform, the barrier of entry is low – and Advizex knows how to get business value immediately.
As virtualization continues to grow in popularity and as cloud infrastructure becomes the norm, the need for seamless, unified cloud management grows. VMware answers the call. It’s cloud agnostic, and VMware is committed to continually adding features to help future-proof your investment.
Getting Business Value from Automation
Automation has numerous benefits, each of which enables your organization to leverage information technology in the pursuit of business goals. Organizations see an immediate return on investment.
- Produce consistent results every single time
- Increase overall speed
- Reduce failure
- Reduce the time to complete tasks
- Remove wait time between the tasks
- Reduce handoffs between teams
- Standardize IT and business processes
- Create self-documenting services
- Enable self-service IT
- Lay the foundation for cloud
It can truly empower IT departments by removing the day-to-day maintenance, or commodity-type tasks necessary to support the organization. IT professionals can then stay focused on business-driving projects and initiatives. Its returned time is quantifiable.
More than Technology, Business Value Comes from People
Technology alone doesn’t bring business value. It needs a strategic, holistic plan. That’s where Advizex comes in. Our team is so well-versed in automation that we have a refined, proven process from start to finish. If you’ve achieved some automation, the Advizex team will try to reuse what’s already there. We want to build upon existing pieces.
If you’re new to automation and orchestration, how to begin can feel overwhelming. From creating a list of candidate tasks to prioritizing them, from process planning to technical implementation, we use our expertise to guide you on how to best leverage the power of vRA for your specific business.
What If We’re Not Currently Using VMware?
Your organization may still be able to use vRealize Automation. It doesn’t require vSphere and there’s a software-as-a-service offering. As always, the Advizex team will assess your organization’s challenges and current environment to give you options for what’s best to reach your goals.
Not Sure Where to Start?
The LEAN Value Stream Analysis-Process Advizer® can help.
Our team will visit you on-site and talk through your processes. We’ll assess which processes have the best potential for hard and soft savings, prioritize efficiency efforts to maximize the value to the business, and leverage process and automation to get things done better, faster, and more cost efficiently.