So the Internet is 40 years old this month; assuming of course that you carbon date one of IT’s most seminal births back to when a few ARPANET boffins first started tinkering with their nodes.

Regardless, all IT pros agree that a lot of ‘cutting edge’ technology has become obselete during that period. Disk storage no longer means a filing system for floppies, high-speed communications are now Gigabit/s rather than Kilobit/s, and ‘the great fax machine revolution’ is something we prefer not to talk about. 40 days is a long time in IT, let alone 40 years.

But while IT continues to be dynamic and evolutionary, the repetitive manual processes that often surround it are stuck in the dark ages. IT is still exciting and surprising, but it is also a utility service; a cost-centre; a business-critical asset.

So what does the future hold for IT? With all the business pressures and expectations, is there still room for innovation? With the constant need to integrate and exploit new technological capabilities, how can IT maintain financial and operational discipline?

They say life begins at 40, so it’s worth considering operational improvements sooner rather than later. Then again they also say 40 is the new 30. In any case, it’s a numbers game…

Pretty much any organization is going to have used IT to automate aspects of its business.  That’s the whole point.  The obvious ones would be the finance processes like invoicing, payroll and accounts payable; or supply chain logistics stuff where stock inventory is controlled and deliveries made as precise and ‘just in time’ as possible.  Less obvious ones would be the sales process, customer service practices and the like.  The point is that IT has successfully automated everything that businesses do; so much so that new Web 2.0 business models have since been created which are entirely based upon IT’s automating influence.

But – HELLO?! – can anyone else spot the glaring discrepancy here? IT has automated every other aspect of business life, except for the IT department. Surrounded by rack upon rack of the most sophisticated technology available, IT people are spending nearly 90% of their total budgets looking after it all; and the meager remainder on innovating new internal services.  If we’re honest, how much of that ‘operating’ pot gets consumed by administering time-consuming processes and replicated tasks, from silo’d and proprietary technology sets?

That’s what brings us to writing this blog and setting up this site.  Automated IT wants to promote best-practice approaches, and their attendant technology solutions, that do the following for the good of the IT dept:

-        Slash operating costs

-        Reduce man-hours

-        Cut space and power needs

-        Support better decision making

-        Boost uptime

Wish us luck!