In this digital era, business organizations rely on digital transformation services and solutions. With accelerating digitization, it is a challenge to create an orchestrated workflow for IT teams. Business organizations cannot afford to operate IT activities separately. There is a need to integrate all IT activities with a pre-defined workflow. All IT activities should be streamlined for better productivity. That is why many business organizations use workflow automation software architecture to streamline their IT processes. Workflow orchestration is still not understood by many CIOs and CTOs in the IT industry. Let us look at workflow orchestration and its benefits.
Understanding workflow orchestration
Workflow orchestration focuses on integrating all your technology stacks under a single pane of glass. With workflow orchestration, you can monitor all your technology stacks from a central point. You will have control of all the IT activities from a single point with workflow orchestration. With a workflow automation software architecture, you can automate and schedule several microservices. Modern-day workflow orchestration tools allow businesses to automate any service with a simple user interface. Workflow orchestration can be viewed as a sequence of IT operations that work together to enhance service availability and business continuity.
A workflow depicts the flow of operations for your business organization. You can know how your product or service is transferred from one business process to another. There can be many workflows for any business organization and, orchestration brings them together. Workflow orchestration may seem complex at the beginning, but it will become easy if you understand that the flow of IT operations should be decided beforehand. Why not monitor and control all your IT activities from a single point rather than operating in silos?
Workflow orchestration boosts the overall productivity of an organization and helps in slashing overhead costs. Some of the applications of workflow orchestration are as follows:
- By orchestrating workflows, you can automate repetitive IT tasks to avoid human error. Tasks like system reboots, application performance monitoring, and machine provisioning can be automated via a workflow orchestration tool.
- Workflow orchestration not only focuses on automating the IT processes. Several business processes like fresher onboarding and employee training can be automated and brought together with an effective workflow automation software architecture. Different business intelligence tools can be controlled from a single point with workflow orchestration.
- Large business organizations use several datacentres to store their infrastructural and business data. With an effective workflow automation software architecture, you can bring all your datacentres together. Databases like SQL and oracle can be controlled from a single point with workflow orchestration. With workflow orchestration, the accessibility of business/infrastructural data increases.
- Infrastructure management is easy with workflow orchestration. You get to see your IT infrastructure completely rather than viewing it in silos.
Challenges with workflow orchestration
Gone are the days when there were a few IT operations and microservices to be managed. Businesses organizations scaled their IT infrastructures to meet the customer demands. At present, a business organization may have many microservices that work together for business continuity. It is challenging to create a workflow automation software architecture when there are so many IT operations and microservices. Legacy workflow orchestration tools are ineffective in handling the ever-growing complexity of the IT infrastructure.
At present, business organizations use many technology stacks to support their IT operations. Traditional workflow orchestration tools cannot handle the increase in technology stacks. Even if one technology is missed during integration, workflow orchestration will be incomplete. Workflow orchestration has become more complex in recent times due to the remote working scenario. Virtual desktop infrastructure solutions should be integrated with on-premises activities to achieve better results. The massive amount of infrastructural data is also a challenge for IT teams involved in workflow orchestration. Due to an increase in the magnitude of infrastructural data, the number of databases is increasing. It can be a challenge to integrate different databases and make the data accessible to everyone via workflow orchestration.
To tackle the challenges of workflow orchestration in the present scenario, businesses have shifted their focus towards new-age technologies. AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) has proved to be an effective solution for workflow orchestration. AIOps has successfully integrated workflows and microservices for many organizations. Let us know how AIOps can help in creating an effective workflow automation software architecture.
What’s the role of AIOps in workflow orchestration?
IT teams must automate workflows in different IT environments. While some IT environments are compatible with workflow automation tools, some are not. AIOps bridges the gap between different workflows and makes them compatible with one another. Discrepancies that occur while designing the workflow architecture can be removed via AIOps. AIOps-based workflow orchestration tools provide you with all the solutions under a single pane of glass.
AIOps can help you take a step further and indulge in service orchestration. AIOps is the backbone of modern-day SOAPs (Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms) that help you take a step further. The capabilities of an AIOps-based workflow orchestration platform are as follows:
- Besides performing IT operations according to time boundaries, you can also activate them according to events. If any microservice needs to be automated at any point, then AIOps will help you. If there is no need of automating any microservice at any point, why waste resources in automating it. Event-driven automation with AIOps helps in slashing costs.
- AIOps can monitor all your software systems responsible for implementing the technology stacks. You can gain visibility into your IT operations with the real-time insights provided by AIOps.
- IT service teams must allocate resources based on their needs. For example, network access, computational ability, and storage space are some resources that are allocated based on demand. Demand-based allocation of resources can be improved with AIOps.
- Infrastructural data regarding all your IT activities can be shown on a single dashboard with AIOps.
Conclusion
An AIOps-based workflow orchestration tool will offer you rich observability. You can gain control of all your IT activities with AIOps, which is a centralized technology. Also, you can orchestrate workflow in any IT environment you like with AIOps. Build an effective workflow automation software architecture with AIOps!