Fujitsu claims IT departments are struggling to keep up with automation

Companies need to refocus their staff to concentrate on the automation of IT operations, according to Fujitsu. The Japanese firm has published a report claiming that admin, budget constraints and technological complexities are preventing most businesses from fully unlocking the potential of IT automation.

While the majority of organisations agree they will need to automate IT to deal with increasing pressures and deliver value to the business, many admit they still have a long way to go, the survey finds. More than three quarters of respondents to the survey said that pressure is increasing ‘rapidly’ or ‘steadily’ to switch to automation. As a result 14 per cent said that their departments are ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ at supporting new or changing business needs, while nearly one in ten struggle with controlling IT-related risks.

For many IT departments, keeping up with IT advances is proving tough work. A third of respondents agreed that in an ideal world, their operations staff would spend less time on admin tasks. Instead, 56 per cent would prefer to spend more time on forward planning, with a view to improving IT infrastructures and processes.

Olivier Delachapelle, head of Enterprise Business, Category Management Data Center at Fujitsu in EMEIA, says: “There is clearly a strong correlation between the level of automation in an IT organisation and the quality of service delivery. Increased automation leads to application and business-focused teams, rather than systems-level specialism, a crucial success factor for digitalisation.

"The software-defined approach creates a fully integrated, dynamic, virtualised environment which provides this level of automation. Although many organisations understand the benefits, they still shy away from moving to software-defined environments. The Fujitsu Integrated System PRIMEFLEX portfolio offers a range of pre-integrated solutions that provide a fast track to the software-defined data centre.”