Data center operations automation has been an elusive IT goal since the first data center. It takes a lot of effort to keep complex technologies running let alone performing at anywhere near their peak. The task is not made any easier with increased demands for and promises of responsive IT infrastructure that is dynamically adaptive to changing and evolving business needs.

The tradeoff between reliable, high-performance operation and changing configurations is a near-perfect inverse ratio. Making changes manually only worsens the ratio. The good news is that data center automation has begun its progression from a gleam in the eye of the far-sighted, but tongue-tied vendors to the reality of business service management (BSM) and, what has become known at its most basic level as Run Book Automation.

Beginning as ad hoc scripting, vendor-provided data center automation ranges from BSM's high level process automation to event-driven executable point solutions to integrated solution suites. Products exist to automate any and all DC operations: job schedulers, server (desktop and mainframe) management, storage management, device management, compliance management and control, including integrated suites.