What is IT automation? A complete guide

How IT automation works

IT automation relies on properly installed and configured software tools to define and execute a prescribed series of detailed actions that are invoked manually or by an external trigger, such as a change in IT capacity demand.

IT automation replaces a series of actions and responses between an administrator and the IT environment. For example, an IT automation platform such as PowerShell combines cmdlets, variables and other components into a script. This script mimics the series of commands and steps that an administrator would implement through the CLI to provision a VM or to create a backup process. An administrator can achieve a more complex IT automation outcome by combining multiple scripts into a series. These limited-scope automation processes are most beneficial when they replace a task that an administrator must perform frequently, thereby eliminating many common errors.

IT automation is sometimes used interchangeably with the term orchestration, but each refers to different functions. Automation accomplishes a task repeatedly without human intervention. Orchestration is a broader concept in which the user coordinates automated tasks into a cohesive IT and business process or workflow.

Enterprise-class IT infrastructure automation tools trigger actions based on thresholds and other situational conditions within the IT environment. Advanced IT automation tools oversee the configuration of systems, software and other infrastructure components; recognize unauthorized or unexpected changes; and automatically take corrective actions. If a workload stops responding, automated steps kick in to restart it on a different server with available capacity. When IT automation is set to enforce a desired state of configurations, the tool detects changes in a server's configuration that are out of spec and restores it to the correct settings.

From a practical perspective, IT automation involves four broad phases:

1. Analysis. IT administrators and other stakeholders assess the manual task or process to be automated.
2. Implementation. The task is translated into a series of instructions, such as scripts, workflows or other automation elements. A task, for instance, might be translated into a series of cmdlets for use in PowerShell.
3. Integration. Once tested and validated, the automation element can be integrated into the automation platform for operational use.
4. Maintenance. Automation elements must be reviewed and updated regularly, often through version control practices similar to those used in software development.

What IT automation is used for

IT operations managers and teams can use IT automation for several tasks, including the following:

• Resource provisioning. Some of the routine provisioning exercises that IT administrators must accomplish include deploying new virtualized servers, creating storage volumes and connecting networks. IT automation can significantly accelerate most of these provisioning tasks, enabling new IT environments to be implemented quickly and repeatedly.
• Cloud provisioning. Like resource provisioning, IT automation can be used to provision CloudOps resources for workload deployments and other outcomes, such as cloud billing or report generation. As with traditional resource provisioning, automation ensures repeatable outcomes every time with faster results and fewer human errors.
• System configuration. Often considered a provisioning task, configuration can ensure a provisioned resource is prepared and set up to accommodate application, business, infrastructure and security needs. Configuration automation is also a common aspect of IT change management strategies.
• Infrastructure management. Countless tasks are used to manage an IT infrastructure -- from regular data backups and data retention to system and application reporting -- to ensure important management tasks are executed with the same consistency and predictability as other IT tasks.
• Incident management. Using automation to respond to major incidents helps enterprises restore service faster and with fewer errors. IT automation helps businesses reduce the duration and cost of such incidents for themselves and their customers. An incident management ticket in response to an outage, for example, can be quickly created and assigned to the appropriate person or queue through automation.
• Application deployment. Whether businesses use traditional or continuous integration and continuous application deployment approaches, automating essential tasks and capabilities -- particularly during testing -- can help them successfully deploy their applications. Automation helps businesses progress from commit and build to testing and deployment in a more systematic manner, improving efficiency and throughput while reducing human error. By using IT automation, businesses can deploy their applications with confidence, configure necessary services from the outset and retrieve their applications and artifacts.
• Security and compliance. IT operations managers can use automation to define and enforce security, compliance and risk management policies and to remediate issues by building these as automated steps across their infrastructure. Automation enables IT operations managers to keep security at the front of their IT processes and to be more proactive in their security efforts. Incorporating standardized, automated cybersecurity processes and workflows makes compliance and auditing easier. Similarly, automation can be triggered by security events, initiating an immediate and consistent response to detected threats.

Benefits of IT automation

IT automation provides process efficiency and consistency, business agility, compliance, AI assistance and lower costs. More specifically, IT automation offers the following benefits:

• IT automation, real-time data and analytics empower companies to quickly adapt to the changing business environment, extend their reach to new locations and target different demographics.
• With the demands of today's distributed public, private and hybrid operating environments -- as well as the movement of data, applications and workloads among clouds -- IT automation systems enable businesses to handle higher workloads and data transactions without compromising performance.
• Automating tedious, repetitive, manual tasks and streamlining processes reduces time spent and costly errors by eliminating the human factor, improves consistency and accuracy, speeds up response times by IT teams as needs arise, and frees up workers to focus on more important, complex projects.
• IT automation platforms with embedded AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities can do more than automate repetitive rules-based tasks. With the advent of generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI, these platforms can help solve problems, broaden the scope of automated tasks and provide better support for developing technologies.
• Different IT administrators perform the same task in different ways, and even the same administrator handles a task differently from one time to the next. For corporate governance and regulatory compliance, an IT automation strategy helps ensure consistency in IT operations, regardless of which administrator is on duty on any given day.
• IT automation tools must be compatible with systems, software and other elements across potentially diverse IT environments. Integration with higher-level orchestration tools bundles tasks into governed workflows.
• The orchestration of automated tasks provides detailed reporting and visibility into the processes and workflows to identify anomalies, make necessary adjustments and ensure uninterrupted operations.
• Automated frameworks and ML tools can automate workflows and repetitive tasks used in systems management and network maintenance to help companies improve their security posture.
• Automating repeatable tasks can lower costs for infrastructure management, cloud services, application deployment, test environments and security incidents.
• Business users with fewer technical skills or without the assistance of IT professionals -- sometimes known as citizen developers -- can create web apps, mobile apps and workflows using low-code/no-code platforms and AI code assistants.

Challenges of IT automation

The benefits of IT automation don't always guarantee results. IT teams must be competent and skilled in using IT automation tools to translate behaviors into concrete procedural steps. If not, IT automation can pose several challenges, including the following:

• Establishing an automated task requires a clear understanding of technical and business goals, which can take time, effort and expense to create, review, validate and update.
• Although automated tasks can be simple and straightforward, some tasks might be extremely complex and demand extensive expertise to implement properly -- especially for businesses with legacy systems on-premises, multiple platforms and large volumes of data.
• Businesses often need to invest in API management software and integration platforms because legacy automation tools might not support APIs for cloud services.
• Automation trades flexibility for speed and efficiency, making it challenging to update automation elements or respond quickly to changing business needs and unexpected events.
• IT automation systems can be prone to error and might require modifications -- and an automated error, by its nature, proliferates much more quickly than a manual error. Also, changing requirements, unstable interfaces and code updates can make maintaining and fixing IT automation more difficult than implementing it.
• Building an automation team can require staff with specialized skills in automation design, cloud architecture, infrastructure and capacity management, systems automation, software development, security automation, testing frameworks and AI.
• IT process automation could change how some IT departments and other employees perform their jobs. These changes could require extensive collaboration and a willingness to develop new skills around AI usage and task optimization.
• Some businesses can fall into the trap of over-automation -- for example, automating complex tasks that require manual intervention or investing in technologies without the necessary skill sets on board to implement them.
• In their rush to invest in IT automation, businesses might overlook the steps to ensure the processes they're trying to automate will create a significant ROI.
• Automation elements are often dependent on underlying tools, platforms and frameworks, and, therefore, can result in vendor lock-in. Changing tool versions or adopting new tools could require reworking automation elements.

IT automation tools and vendors

IT automation platforms, tools and frameworks automate tasks ranging from repetitive operations to complex workflows, including testing, configuration management and orchestration. IT automation software traditionally required some coding ability because many tools lacked low-code, drag-and-drop functionality to configure automated workflows. Now, many IT automation platforms support low-code, no-code or AI-assisted workflow creation.

The sheer number of IT automation tools can complicate the selection process. Selecting the wrong tool can lead to deployment failures, workflow disruptions, higher costs and tool sprawl. It's important to understand the various categories of IT automation tools and their applications, with consideration geared toward business needs, system integration, scalability, compliance demands, degree of difficulty and performance monitoring. The following are common IT automation tool categories and their primary functions:

• Provisioning and software deployment. These tools automate tasks such as setting up user accounts, deploying OS images and installing or updating software on servers and PCs.
• Configuration management. CM tools define, apply and maintain configurations as part of software development, deployment and change management.
• Workflow automation. These platforms automate business and technical workflows involving multiple tasks and often serve as the foundation for orchestration.
• API management. Tools in this category support API creation, publication, security and operation to control data and service access through a centralized gateway for developers.
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery. CI/CD tools automate software building, testing and deployment throughout the software delivery pipeline.
• Monitoring and anomaly detection. These types of platforms monitor applications and infrastructure. They detect anomalies that might signal performance, application health, availability or security issues.
• AIOps and AI assistants. These tools can automate or assist with tasks such as incident detection, alert analysis, root cause analysis, script generation, infrastructure provisioning and configuration management.
• Task automation. These platforms automate many aspects of daily business operations, including notifications, alerts, status updates and data movement and backup.
• Service desk automation and virtual assistants. With these tools, IT teams can streamline ticket management and user support through chatbots, ChatOps tools and automated workflows.
• Governance and compliance. Software in this category manages regulatory and legal issues, such as digital rights control, data security and protection, business continuity and disaster recovery, as well as legal records and documentation.
• Infrastructure as code. IaC software uses configuration files or programming languages to provision and manage infrastructure through consistent, repeatable deployments across physical, virtual and cloud environments.
• Kubernetes platforms and GitOps. These tools automate the deployment, configuration and management of containerized applications using declarative configurations maintained in version control.

Many vendors operate in the IT automation landscape. Some are dedicated to specific automation tools, while others are major technology providers that offer automation as part of their wide-ranging product offerings.

Microsoft's automation offerings include System Center Orchestrator for IT infrastructure automation, Service Manager for IT service management, PowerShell for scripting and system configuration and PowerShell Desired State Configuration for automating Windows and Linux configurations. Microsoft also offers Azure Automation for cloud automation.

Broadcom and BMC provide enterprise automation tools for provisioning, patching, configuration and compliance management across physical, virtual and cloud environments, with BMC offering preconfigured compliance policies.

Red Hat Ansible, Pulumi, Chef, Puppet, Salt and HashiCorp Terraform support automation and IaC, helping organizations create consistent workflows from development through IT operations.

IT professionals who prefer general-purpose workflow automation can use business process automation platforms such as Zapier, ClickUp, Kissflow and ProcessMaker to automate processes, including ticketing, incident management, user provisioning, asset tracking and reporting.

How to build a business case for automation

IT has evolved from a business burden to a vital service that must support and keep pace with constant change. Traditional, manual IT management can't meet today's business needs, and technologies such as automation and orchestration have become indispensable for modernizing business processes.

IT teams must do their homework and apply proof-of-concept principles to process and workflow modernization, which -- when done properly -- present the following advantages:

• Automation can deliver consistently successful outcomes without errors or oversights commonly associated with manual human intervention.
• Automation can handle greater workloads faster than manual human effort.
• Greater speed and less human intervention can reduce the business costs associated with many important tasks and workflows.
• With relief from the burden of time-consuming and repetitive tasks, professionals can focus on more strategic actions that are more valuable to the business.
• Automation's consistency helps organizations implement proper security checks and regulatory compliance requirements.

The business case should not only focus on demonstrating the overall benefits of automation, but it should also zero in on the key areas most in need of automation and easiest to automate and measure, to ensure early successes. A sound business case depends on an ongoing comprehensive strategy that encompasses every aspect of IT automation, including business goals, governance practices, tool selection and proper training.

A well-designed strategy should detail and document the approach an enterprise will use to automate tasks, speed up workflows across the infrastructure, reduce errors and delays caused by human intervention, and deliver necessary IT services faster and at lower cost than manual processes.

Best practices for implementing IT automation

The path to implementing automation is fraught with mistakes and waste. Careful planning and a concerted effort are critical to implementing automation plans in a way that's meaningful and maintainable. Best practices for implementing IT automation include the following:

• Establish clear goals for the automation initiative, including problems the business is trying to solve and how automation tools and tactics will address those issues now and five years after implementation.
• Know that automation isn't all or nothing. Target common and frequently performed tasks that consume the most resources, demand significant time and are most error-prone.
• In addition to targeting a certain task for automation, consider the current workflows for multiple tasks companywide and seek common sequences or subprocesses for automation that can lead to orchestration.
• All tasks and workflows identified for automation should be carefully reviewed and approved by the various stakeholders, including IT, business, security and legal teams, to eliminate traditional silos of responsibility that can sabotage implementation.
• Evaluate IT automation tools, platforms and frameworks that best suit current and future automation projects. They can range from IT-centric tools to business workflow automation platforms.
• Implement a series of test projects so participants can learn about the tools and develop a working knowledge of automation development and implementation.
• Integrate IT automation tools with change management systems to ensure changes are reviewed, appropriate, implemented correctly by responsible teams and audited if necessary.
• Apply metrics or KPIs to objectively measure how automation affects the business. Monitoring also helps determine bottlenecks within the automated processes.
• Automate a small suite of tasks and workflows and prove automation's value to the business, then systematically automate additional tasks.
• Plan periodic reviews to revisit and revalidate automated processes, so automation maintenance is not neglected or treated as an afterthought.

IT automation teams: Roles, skills and cultural needs

Nowhere within an enterprise is collaboration more important than IT automation, which powers everything from application development and infrastructure deployment to business processes. The core responsibilities of IT automation teams center on integrating systems, applications and data; creating scripts and APIs to connect systems; and automating tasks and workflows.

A typical IT automation team consists of stakeholders from practically every corner of the enterprise. They can include IT professionals, system automation specialists, cloud automation engineers, DevOps engineers, AI developers, security automation specialists, site reliability engineers, Agile coaches, integration engineers and business process engineers.

These roles typically require experience in some of the following practices:

• Agile and DevOps principles.
• AI and ML.
• Automation design.
• Cloud architecture.
• Infrastructure and capacity management.
• Security automation.
• Software development.
• Systems automation.
• Testing frameworks.

Fulfilling these roles could entail a wide range of technical skills and knowledge, such as scripting (Python, JavaScript, Bash and PowerShell), source code management; containers and Kubernetes; security; testing; observability; monitoring; networks; and business and industry. Additional important soft or cultural skills include leadership, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, storytelling and a focus on automation.

All these roles and responsibilities work together to ensure a continuous cycle of improvement in IT automation practices.

Trends and future of IT automation

As automation tools become faster, easier and cheaper to deploy, organizations are expanding their use across more processes and workflows. The common thread among IT automation trends is the convergence of technologies and the orchestration of end-to-end processes as businesses shift toward more intelligent, efficient and interconnected operations.

AI and ML add a layer of intelligence that transforms IT automation from simple, task-oriented machine applications into systems that can learn from data, identify patterns, make predictions, support and automate decision-making, bring together disparate tasks and processes, and handle more complex work without human intervention.

Agentic AI and intelligent automation

Agentic AI adoption is increasing. Intelligent AI agents are moving a step closer to humanlike behavior with the capacity to understand their surroundings, reason things out and immediately act on their own -- with guardrails -- which could speed up productivity. Yet many businesses planning to increase their automation investments are struggling to integrate agentic AI and AI agents into their processes.

Hyperautomation, which combines AI, ML and robotic process automation (RPA), is also experiencing a resurgence. GenAI-infused tools can help ensure smoother, more cohesive end-to-end processes by working with legacy systems and gluing together once-isolated parts of automation. RPA is shedding its role as a one-dimensional rules-based system limited to simple, repetitive tasks and instead taking on greater intelligence by integrating with AI and learning to adapt to its environment.

Orchestration and automation platforms

Business orchestration and automation technologies will converge into platforms that include aspects of RPA, digital process automation, integration platform as a service and low-code tools to take on a wider swath of business processes. These platforms will focus on orchestration, agent-building using prompts and new forms of agent governance.

AI-driven orchestration is also expanding, enabling systems to execute tasks, predict problems and proactively optimize workflows with greater autonomy, accuracy and speed than manual implementations. This enables IT teams to accomplish far more work in the same amount of time. AI also provides detailed reporting, visibility and analysis, so orchestrated workflows can deliver predictable and repeatable outcomes that help companies demonstrate their preparedness for security, compliance and business continuity.

Expanding access to automation

Also on the rise is no-code/low-code automation, which enables users to create their own workflows without programming expertise. Self-service automation will enable business users to build their own automations using RPA software and eventually incorporate GenAI components. Citizen developers are expected to build a significant portion of GenAI-infused automation applications, primarily developing initial workflows, creating forms and visualizing processes.

AI-assisted automation tools in software development are continuously evolving. CI/CD workflow tools are well established, but future activity will emphasize automation at the code-creation level.

Extending automation across IT operations

Security automation, which detects and responds to incidents, is becoming more widespread. Cybersecurity automation tools will need to be adaptable and insightful so AI can build context about network activity and react to changing business goals and needs.

Another trend, edge computing, brings data closer to the source for real-time analysis. Business ecosystem automation is an overarching concept of using technology to streamline and automate processes within a network of interconnected businesses, partners and customers.

Emerging AI capabilities and foundations

Embodied AI, aided by edge intelligence, is being integrated into robots, enabling them to interact with and learn from their environment through sensors, motors and ML. Instead of following preprogrammed rules and workflows, these robots can sense and respond to their environment to handle more complex and unpredictable situations -- much like agentic AI systems are anticipated to do in automated processes.

Internal LLMs with proprietary data and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities hold even more promise for IT automation. RAG enables AI to retrieve relevant information while it's generating responses. AI-driven automation depends on trusted, accurate data and effective governance, as poor-quality data, biased models and security risks can undermine automation initiatives.

Editor's note: This article was updated in 2026 to reflect the latest IT automation advancements and applications.

Stephen J. Bigelow, senior technology editor at Informa TechTarget, has more than 30 years of technical writing experience in the PC and technology industry.

Ron Karjian is an industry editor and writer at Informa TechTarget covering business analytics, artificial intelligence, data management, security and enterprise applications.

Kinza Yasar and Ryann Burnett also contributed to this article.