Shows
Enterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 14 – Introducing Product Thinking for Automation LeadersIn this Enterprise Automation Excellence episode, hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke explore how automation teams can adopt "product thinking" to better serve business needs and stakeholders. Rather than focusing solely on technology delivery, product thinking shifts the emphasis to understanding customer problems and working backward to solutions. This approach helps automation leaders move from reactive, ad-hoc service delivery to strategic, value-driven automation portfolios that align with business outcomes and demonstrate the importance of automation to business activities.Key TakeawaysStart with the job to be done, not the requested tool or technology....2025-05-3027 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 13 - Automation MyopiaIn this Enterprise Automation Excellence episode, hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss "automation myopia" - the problem of defining automation needs too narrowly, leading to suboptimal tool selection. They explore how development teams often focus on solving a narrow set of automation requirements, rather than considering end-to-end processes. The hosts advocate for broader thinking that considers operational requirements, business needs, and regulatory concerns beyond just a project’s technical requirements. They recommend wrapping specialized tools within enterprise-wide orchestration systems to maintain visibility of the complete business process while still leveraging the capabilities of specialized automation tools.Key Po...2025-05-0123 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 12 - Observability’s Role in Smarter AutomationIn this episode, hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the relationship between observability and automation in enterprise systems. They explore how observability tools and standards like OpenTelemetrycan improve automation orchestration by providing visibility into the entire business process ecosystem. The hosts note that while observability technology is still in early stages for automation, it represents a significant opportunity to enhance orchestration capabilities, reduce downtime, and provide actionable business insights beyond technical metrics. They emphasize the need for standards development and collaboration between automation and observability teams.Key FindingsObservability is defined as "...2025-04-2123 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 11 - Change Management and AutomationIn this episode, hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the complex relationship between change management and automation. They explore how these two control functions must work together despite their inherent tensions--automation requires stability to function reliably, while modern business environments demand frequent changes. The conversation examines how automation teams navigate changes from multiple sources: application updates, infrastructure changes, automation tool updates, citizen developers, and external vendors. The hosts emphasize the need for balanced governance that enables business agility while maintaining system integrity, noting that emerging technologies like AI will further complicate this balance while potentially offering future solutions.2025-04-0726 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 10 - AI and Observability in Workload Automation and OrchestrationDan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss EMA's latest research report titled "The Future of Workload Automation and Orchestration: Driving Digital Transformation with Orchestration and Generative AI". The hosts explore the evolving landscape of workload automation, highlighting how it has become a central hub for orchestration across enterprises. The conversation covers key trends including growth in the number of jobs, staffing and skill challenges, the rise of observability, and the impact of AI on automation strategies. The research shows workload automation tools are evolving into enterprise-wide orchestration platforms that connect business processes beyond just technical automations.Key FindingsContinued...2025-03-0421 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEp. 9 – Balancing Control and Innovation: The Modern Automation Center of ExcellenceThis episode discusses the role and evolution of Automation Centers of Excellence (CoE) in enterprises. The hosts, Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke, explore how CoEs have become critical organizational structures for managing automation
initiatives, discussing how CoEs serve as knowledge-sharing hubs, bridge gaps between technical teams and citizen developers, and help standardize automation
practices.
Key Points
-CoEs are an organizational pattern found in large enterprises to coordinate important cross-group initiatives by streamlining the sharing of technical and organizational knowledge
-The majority of automation organizations have either formal or informal CoEs
-CoEs' r...2025-01-3021 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 8 - Five Key Trends from Gartner I&O 2024: AI, Automation, and the Evolution of Technical LeadershipDan and Tom discuss Tom's observations and learnings from the 2024 Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies conference in Las Vegas.
AI and improving Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) leadership were key themes, with sessions addressing strategic and tactical approaches for technology, business, and staffing issues.
The I&O outlook for 2025 and beyond was optimistic, while acknowledging executive frustrations with the increasing costs of cloud, failures of major projects, and the disruptions generated from CVEs and other security events.
Key Ideas
- **Generative AI**: Gartner believes that we are still in the early days with respect to...2025-01-1026 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 7 - Balancing the Scales: Citizen Developers and Centralized OrchestrationDan has returned from Italy where he participated in an HCL Automation customer event focused on orchestration of business processes as an integrated element of a centralized automation solution.
HCL has embraced orchestration as encompassing business process automation as an extension of traditional job scheduling and workload automation, leveraging the centralized automation team and controls that exist in many organizations.
HCL announced the 2nd generation of their Universal Orchestrator product, integrating with the other elements of their Automation Orchestrator Suite.
Key Ideas:
- Automation continues to increase in strategic importance, over 40% of IT executives...2024-12-3020 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 6 - Automation Excellence in 2025: What Should Be On Your Radar?We're most of the way through 2024 and it's time to start thinking about plans for next year. In many cases, the budget has already been set, but it's still important to think through what your priorities will be and how to allocate time for yourself and your team.
Important Trends:
* Digital Transformation – 70% of organizations are in the midst of transformation efforts, relying heavily on automation services to achieve their digitization goals
* Cloud Migration – Increasing push toward multi-cloud and hybrid cloud, strategic focus on SaaS applications
* Expanding Automation User Base – Growing emphasis on citizen developers, business teams...2024-11-2524 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 5 - Cybersecurity 101 for Automation LeadersChris Steffen joins the EAE podcast to discuss how
automation teams can collaborate with security teams to maintain a secure, resilient environment.
Enterprise automation is expected to orchestrate critical
processes 24x7x365. Automation teams must address risks from infrastructure failures and security vulnerabilities in their tools and environments.
Key Ideas
- Automation systems carry high risk due to their
critical role and extensive integrations across business, analytics, and operations.
- Cloud and SaaS foundations still require
automation teams to understand configurations for reliability.
- Business-critical automation systems often
demand 99.999...2024-11-1323 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 4 - Mainframe Modernization clears the path for Digital TransformationBuilding on the learnings from a recent EMA survey on mainframe modernization initiatives, we discuss where these initiatives fit into enterprise activities and what automation teams should consider when involved in these efforts.
Key Ideas
- Business transformation and technology portfolio modernization efforts are occurring in many organizations
- These initiatives have become a core part of how businesses evolve to meet customer expectations and grow into new markets
- In the past, many technology teams took an incremental "just enough modernization" approach to limit costs and risk, however, this can be insufficient where dramatic...2024-10-3121 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 3 - BMC Connect 2024 - The Split Announcement and Conference Learnings
In this episode, we explore BMC's recent decision to split
into two companies, a strategic shift announced shortly before BMC Connect 2024. We break down what this means for the future of BMC and its customers, diving into the key updates from the conference, including exciting innovations from BMC's Innovation Labs, the latest on HelixGPT the Change Risk Advisor, and Helix Edge.
We also discuss what BMC's business changes mean for the automation ecosystem, and insights from automation users currently undertaking mainframe modernization efforts.
Tune in as we discuss how these developments will shape the future of AI, automati...2024-10-2123 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 2 - Orchestration
Enterprise Automation Excellence Podcast: Episode 2 - Orchestration
Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the increasing use of the word "Orchestration" in the automation space, considering whether it reflects a relabeling of existing concepts or an evolution of the automation landscape. They look at how automation's use has expanded from technology operations to business process management and how orchestration enables more complex use cases via delegation of task management to specialized scheduling solutions.
Key Points:
- Orchestration is an evolution in IT automation, enabling the management of more complex processes across...2024-09-3020 minEnterprise Automation ExcellenceEpisode 1 - Welcome and CrowdStrike OutageEnterprise
Automation Excellence Podcast: Episode 1 - Welcome
Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss the goals and scope for the Enterprise Automation Excellence podcast, then discuss the learnings that automation leaders should take from the CloudStrike outage this past July.
EAE Podcast Home: https://em360tech.com/podcast-series/enterprise-automation-excellence
Feedback and Questions: eaepodcast@emausa.com
EMA Cybersecurity Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 72 (CloudStrike): https://media.transistor.fm/cb00ae8d/0932d549.mp3
2024-09-1721 min