Bill Hirsch

Just about every business and agency is developing an IT automation strategy to increase their time to market and decrease human error. However, not everyone is excited about this new direction. Some IT workers are concerned that “automation” is a code word for “job elimination”. In this session, we’ll examine why that fear is not a reality. In fact, automation is having quite the opposite effect by creating new roles and career paths in IT. Ansible automation has simply shifted the workload from manual, time consuming, and error-prone tasks to automated workflows that are faster, safer, and reusable. But we need experts in those things we automate. Come hear about how you can strengthen your value in the workforce by embracing automation rather than dismissing it.

Many government organizations face inefficiencies when provisioning or modifying infrastructure for their customers. Delivering a simple application often includes a laundry list of manual or error-prone tasks spread across multiple departments and often leads to friction between agencies and central IT. In a software defined data center (SDDC), we bypass arbitrary organizational gates, drastically decrease mistakes, and greatly increase the time to delivery.
Self-service and automation across the infrastructure stack from the initial request to production delivery is not only possible, it is how other agencies and major corporations are achieving a competitive edge in today’s market.