Many infrastructure know-how groups consider they’ve mastered infrastructure automation, however the information tells a special story. We commissioned a survey to discover the state of infrastructure automation, and this analysis uncovered a stark hole between notion and actuality. Whereas 45% of organizations consider they’ve achieved a excessive degree of infrastructure automation, solely 14% exhibit the habits and know-how patterns of infrastructure automation excellence.
This is among the illuminating findings of our survey of 413 infrastructure software buy decision-makers and influencers, carried out by Panterra. Full outcomes are detailed in “The State of Infrastructure Automation” report, obtainable for obtain.
What I discover most compelling concerning the survey revelations—and what the report addresses intimately—is the vital problem dealing with know-how decision-makers: balancing the necessity for pace with the need of management. Within the pursuit of speedy deployment, many groups have sacrificed safety, governance, and operational stability. Essentially the most profitable organizations—these we classify as “Leaders”—have discovered a option to break away from this “Velocity-Management Paradox,” attaining each velocity and management. Their success gives a blueprint for others to comply with.
What Infrastructure Automation Leaders Do That Others Don’t
The report uncovered clear patterns among the many most automation-mature organizations—those that have mastered the Velocity-Management Paradox:
- Developer Self-Service with Guardrails: Leaders empower builders to deploy infrastructure independently whereas embedding safeguards. Leaders have constructed high-velocity environments the place builders can concentrate on constructing somewhat than troubleshooting: 61% of Leaders have streamlined workflows and lowered friction, in comparison with 8% of firms who’re categorized as simply getting began with Infrastructure Automation.
- Platform Engineering for Consistency: Leaders are 5 instances extra prone to have applied a platform engineering crew than their less-advanced friends: 29% of Leaders have applied platform groups in comparison with simply 7% of whole respondents. Leaders don’t depend on ad-hoc automation; they set up devoted platform groups to create standardized workflows and reusable templates, making certain consistency throughout environments.
- Safety as a Constructed-In Basis: Greater than half (58%) of Leaders have minimize safety incidents, and 56% report fewer compliance violations versus 36% of whole respondents. Leaders combine automated safety checks, coverage enforcement, and drift detection into each stage of their automation pipeline. Safety is just not an afterthought; it’s a steady, proactive course of.
- Price Optimization as a Precedence: Leaders view value effectivity as important to enterprise success: 51% of Leaders cite value financial savings & ROI as a high enterprise metric, in comparison with 41% of respondents total. By leveraging automated value estimation and coverage enforcement to curb overprovisioning and forestall waste, 47% of Leaders have efficiently lowered infrastructure prices, in comparison with 32% of all respondents.
- Orchestration Over Automation: Essentially the most superior groups transcend software adoption. They orchestrate all the infrastructure lifecycle—provisioning, configuration, safety, and governance—right into a unified, automated pipeline. This end-to-end orchestration is what drives true automation maturity and outcomes like these: Main firms are twice as prone to get infrastructure deployments proper on the primary attempt, 4 instances extra prone to provision new sources in 4 hours or much less, and 5 instances extra prone to deploy modifications in manufacturing every day or a number of instances a day. In distinction, over 50% of organizations take every week or extra to deploy infrastructure modifications in manufacturing, and 43% have to rerun their infrastructure deployments greater than 4 instances to get it proper.
Is Your Group an Automation Chief?
The place are you on the adoption continuum? Your group could also be an Experimenter, testing out some instruments. Or maybe you might be an Adopter, implementing some automation however battling standardization and governance. Extra progressive firms might be Optimizers, having made important progress with automated deployments and governance, and focusing now on addressing gaps in safety, compliance and scalability. And bravo to you in case your group is a Chief, with automation, safety, compliance and scalability constructed into each course of.
Ask your self these questions to assist make clear your group’s present standing:
- Are we automating for pace alone, or are we orchestrating safety, compliance, and value management alongside it?
- How a lot of our infrastructure is actually managed by Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and the way are we managing drift?
- Are builders empowered with self-service instruments, or are they nonetheless ready on DevOps and platform groups to unlock progress?
- Is safety embedded from the outset, or can we uncover vulnerabilities after deployment?
- Can we measure success by deployment frequency alone, or can we additionally measure by effectivity, value financial savings, and danger discount?
Easy methods to Obtain Infrastructure Automation Excellence
Right here’s the perfect information that our examine reveals: Any group can obtain infrastructure automation excellence by adopting a deliberate, strategic strategy. Endeavor to do these 5 issues:
- Benchmark Your Maturity: Start with an sincere evaluation. Use obtainable self-assessment instruments to grasp the place you stand on the automation maturity curve. Recognizing gaps is step one towards enchancment.
- Shift Left on Safety & Compliance: Combine safety and compliance checks early in your infrastructure planning and lifecycle. Automated validation processes stop points from reaching manufacturing, lowering danger and minimizing downtime.
- Steadiness Velocity with Governance: Foster a tradition the place pace and safety are usually not competing priorities however complementary targets. Empower builders via self-service whereas establishing clear insurance policies and automatic guardrails.
- Standardize Via Platform Engineering: Centralize automation efforts beneath a platform crew that aligns instruments, workflows, and greatest practices throughout the group. This crew ought to function an enabler, not a gatekeeper.
- Measure What Issues: Transfer past deployment velocity as the only real metric. Monitor value effectivity, safety incidents, and infrastructure stability. A balanced scorecard strategy fosters sustainable automation progress.
True infrastructure automation management is just not about transferring quick—it’s about transferring quick with certainty. To realize this, Leaders put money into processes and crew constructions that guarantee automation is each agile and safe.
From Experimentation to Excellence
Wherever you might be on the automation continuum, you’ll inevitably encounter the Velocity-Management Paradox alongside the way in which. The excellent news is that the blueprint for fulfillment is now clearer than ever. Leaders have proven that it’s potential to ship on the pace of innovation with out sacrificing management.
We’d love to listen to extra about your automation journey and share how we might help. Come see us at KubeCon, sales space N560. And be a part of us for OpenTofu Day on April 1, the day earlier than the principle occasion kicks off.
And don’t neglect to obtain a replica of the analysis report and reap the benefits of our free evaluation software. See you at KubeCon!
Many infrastructure know-how groups consider they’ve mastered infrastructure automation, however the information tells a special story. We commissioned a survey to discover the state of infrastructure automation, and this analysis uncovered a stark hole between notion and actuality. Whereas 45% of organizations consider they’ve achieved a excessive degree of infrastructure automation, solely 14% exhibit the habits and know-how patterns of infrastructure automation excellence.
This is among the illuminating findings of our survey of 413 infrastructure software buy decision-makers and influencers, carried out by Panterra. Full outcomes are detailed in “The State of Infrastructure Automation” report, obtainable for obtain.
What I discover most compelling concerning the survey revelations—and what the report addresses intimately—is the vital problem dealing with know-how decision-makers: balancing the necessity for pace with the need of management. Within the pursuit of speedy deployment, many groups have sacrificed safety, governance, and operational stability. Essentially the most profitable organizations—these we classify as “Leaders”—have discovered a option to break away from this “Velocity-Management Paradox,” attaining each velocity and management. Their success gives a blueprint for others to comply with.
What Infrastructure Automation Leaders Do That Others Don’t
The report uncovered clear patterns among the many most automation-mature organizations—those that have mastered the Velocity-Management Paradox:
- Developer Self-Service with Guardrails: Leaders empower builders to deploy infrastructure independently whereas embedding safeguards. Leaders have constructed high-velocity environments the place builders can concentrate on constructing somewhat than troubleshooting: 61% of Leaders have streamlined workflows and lowered friction, in comparison with 8% of firms who’re categorized as simply getting began with Infrastructure Automation.
- Platform Engineering for Consistency: Leaders are 5 instances extra prone to have applied a platform engineering crew than their less-advanced friends: 29% of Leaders have applied platform groups in comparison with simply 7% of whole respondents. Leaders don’t depend on ad-hoc automation; they set up devoted platform groups to create standardized workflows and reusable templates, making certain consistency throughout environments.
- Safety as a Constructed-In Basis: Greater than half (58%) of Leaders have minimize safety incidents, and 56% report fewer compliance violations versus 36% of whole respondents. Leaders combine automated safety checks, coverage enforcement, and drift detection into each stage of their automation pipeline. Safety is just not an afterthought; it’s a steady, proactive course of.
- Price Optimization as a Precedence: Leaders view value effectivity as important to enterprise success: 51% of Leaders cite value financial savings & ROI as a high enterprise metric, in comparison with 41% of respondents total. By leveraging automated value estimation and coverage enforcement to curb overprovisioning and forestall waste, 47% of Leaders have efficiently lowered infrastructure prices, in comparison with 32% of all respondents.
- Orchestration Over Automation: Essentially the most superior groups transcend software adoption. They orchestrate all the infrastructure lifecycle—provisioning, configuration, safety, and governance—right into a unified, automated pipeline. This end-to-end orchestration is what drives true automation maturity and outcomes like these: Main firms are twice as prone to get infrastructure deployments proper on the primary attempt, 4 instances extra prone to provision new sources in 4 hours or much less, and 5 instances extra prone to deploy modifications in manufacturing every day or a number of instances a day. In distinction, over 50% of organizations take every week or extra to deploy infrastructure modifications in manufacturing, and 43% have to rerun their infrastructure deployments greater than 4 instances to get it proper.
Is Your Group an Automation Chief?
The place are you on the adoption continuum? Your group could also be an Experimenter, testing out some instruments. Or maybe you might be an Adopter, implementing some automation however battling standardization and governance. Extra progressive firms might be Optimizers, having made important progress with automated deployments and governance, and focusing now on addressing gaps in safety, compliance and scalability. And bravo to you in case your group is a Chief, with automation, safety, compliance and scalability constructed into each course of.
Ask your self these questions to assist make clear your group’s present standing:
- Are we automating for pace alone, or are we orchestrating safety, compliance, and value management alongside it?
- How a lot of our infrastructure is actually managed by Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and the way are we managing drift?
- Are builders empowered with self-service instruments, or are they nonetheless ready on DevOps and platform groups to unlock progress?
- Is safety embedded from the outset, or can we uncover vulnerabilities after deployment?
- Can we measure success by deployment frequency alone, or can we additionally measure by effectivity, value financial savings, and danger discount?
Easy methods to Obtain Infrastructure Automation Excellence
Right here’s the perfect information that our examine reveals: Any group can obtain infrastructure automation excellence by adopting a deliberate, strategic strategy. Endeavor to do these 5 issues:
- Benchmark Your Maturity: Start with an sincere evaluation. Use obtainable self-assessment instruments to grasp the place you stand on the automation maturity curve. Recognizing gaps is step one towards enchancment.
- Shift Left on Safety & Compliance: Combine safety and compliance checks early in your infrastructure planning and lifecycle. Automated validation processes stop points from reaching manufacturing, lowering danger and minimizing downtime.
- Steadiness Velocity with Governance: Foster a tradition the place pace and safety are usually not competing priorities however complementary targets. Empower builders via self-service whereas establishing clear insurance policies and automatic guardrails.
- Standardize Via Platform Engineering: Centralize automation efforts beneath a platform crew that aligns instruments, workflows, and greatest practices throughout the group. This crew ought to function an enabler, not a gatekeeper.
- Measure What Issues: Transfer past deployment velocity as the only real metric. Monitor value effectivity, safety incidents, and infrastructure stability. A balanced scorecard strategy fosters sustainable automation progress.
True infrastructure automation management is just not about transferring quick—it’s about transferring quick with certainty. To realize this, Leaders put money into processes and crew constructions that guarantee automation is each agile and safe.
From Experimentation to Excellence
Wherever you might be on the automation continuum, you’ll inevitably encounter the Velocity-Management Paradox alongside the way in which. The excellent news is that the blueprint for fulfillment is now clearer than ever. Leaders have proven that it’s potential to ship on the pace of innovation with out sacrificing management.
We’d love to listen to extra about your automation journey and share how we might help. Come see us at KubeCon, sales space N560. And be a part of us for OpenTofu Day on April 1, the day earlier than the principle occasion kicks off.
And don’t neglect to obtain a replica of the analysis report and reap the benefits of our free evaluation software. See you at KubeCon!
