What is IT Orchestration?

Managing many IT tickets, requests, and repetitive administrative tasks is impractical and can overwhelm employees. The complex IT infrastructure, diverse apps and the growing demand for IT support make it impossible to handle everything manually.

The outcome? Inefficiency, frustration, and mounting losses. 

The answer? IT Orchestration. 

By utilizing the capabilities of IT orchestration, you can achieve seamless ITSM operations. 

Here, we'll explore the “what” and “why” of IT orchestration, its benefits, and how it can empower your organization to achieve peak IT efficiency.

What is IT Orchestration?

The process of setting up a server would entail the following tasks: 

• Plan and furnish server’s purpose and hardware requirements 
• Deploy the OS and install essential software packages 
• Server configuration like user accounts, network settings and security policies
• Enhance security by setting up firewalls, configuring access controls and encryptions, etc.
• Conduct tests and validations for server functionality 
• Track and monitor server performance.

While they look simple, these scenarios present immense complexities.  

IT orchestration revolves around coordinating and automating the execution of multiple IT tasks and processes. Setting up a server through efficient IT orchestration involves automating the steps, ensuring seamless coordination between them and supporting the interconnected workflows and systems. It also applies to cloud or on-premise distributed systems.

Here's a breakdown of what IT orchestration typically involves:

• Advanced IT Automation to streamline and optimize processes and workflows
• Seamless integration and coordination among various workflows, processes and resources, components and systems.
• Manage the entire workflow from design to execution, monitoring, and workflow optimization.

IT Orchestration vs IT Automation

While IT automation does seem similar to IT orchestration, there is a difference. IT orchestration takes IT automation a step further. 

IT orchestration goes beyond automating a single task to sequencing automated processes in the correct order to ensure smooth and quick workflow. Consequently, everything works seamlessly together.

Now, to better understand the difference between IT orchestration and automation, let’s pick up our previous example of setting up a new server.  

In our example of the new server’s setup, IT automation might involve scripting individual steps like provisioning the server, installing software, and configuring settings. An automation team might be able to individually automate these different steps. 

However, in IT orchestration, the entire workflow is managed so that these individual automated tasks are performed in the correct order. 

Regarding IT orchestration, you might hear several terms like software orchestration, cloud orchestration, etc. These are subsets of IT orchestration. 

Here are some of the most commonly known IT orchestration subsets:

• Software orchestration – focuses on automating and coordinating the execution of multiple software tasks and workflows. 
• Cloud orchestration – focuses on automating tasks to efficiently manage complex cloud infrastructure and monitor cloud resources and services.
• Data orchestration – focuses on automating the movement, processing, and analysis of data across data sources, systems, and platforms
• Security orchestration and automation response (SOAR) – focuses on integrating and automating security processes and workflows.
• DevOps orchestration – focuses on automating and coordinating the software development and IT operations processes.

Why should we invest in IT orchestration? Let’s understand this in the next section. 

Benefits of IT Orchestration – Why Invest?

Although IT Orchestration might seem like adding another layer of work and cost, it actually does otherwise. These benefits of IT orchestration will tell you why investing can put you miles ahead of competitors in terms of streamlined IT operations and competition.

Standardizes processes

Orchestration ensures that IT processes are carried out consistently across teams and departments. Thus, it enables standardization and reduces confusion. The result is improved collaboration and reduced errors resulting from variations in manual procedures.

Increases business accuracy

Automating tasks individually might reduce human errors, but numerous pitfalls still remain due to the lack of coordination between different IT tasks. 

Also, repetitive tasks cause redundancy among employees, leaving room for more errors in the long run. IT Orchestration enforces consistent workflows and eliminates the possibility of human error in performing manual tasks. This means more accuracy and reduced risk of configuration mistakes or missed steps.

Boosts and optimizes productivity

IT orchestration enables your team to be agile by automating repetitive workflows such as complex server setups, infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, etc. This helps the  IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives, not manual configurations.

Your business experiences faster time-to-market for new features, putting you ahead of your competitors. It also minimizes downtime, which further saves huge downtime costs (for example, outages cost Facebook nearly $100 million)

It reduces costs

IT orchestration can reduce unnecessary costs due to too many errors and slow and repetitive manual processes. It reduces labor costs and costs incurred to stay competitive and enhances operational efficiency. By automating and coordinating these individual workflows, you significantly reduce the labor costs of managing IT infrastructure.

Use Cases for IT Orchestration

IT orchestration shines in various ITSM scenarios by automating complex workflows and boosting efficiency. Here are some compelling use cases to help you have a better grasp:

Unified IT workflow automation

Orchestration manages all IT workflows from one place and can use AI automation. It offers a unified platform to orchestrate diverse workflows. This involves:

• Automated server provisioning and configuration – streamlines the entire server setup process, freeing up your IT staff for more strategic tasks
• Automated application deployment – orchestrates the deployment of new applications across your infrastructure
• Automated service desk tasks – automates repetitive tasks like user provisioning, password resets, and incident ticketing

Using platforms like Rezolve.ai, which uses Gen-AI technology to automate service desks, can streamline processes and enhance productivity.

It offers a centralized platform for managing all IT tasks and eliminates the need for multiple platforms or tools to orchestrate workflows. Creating automated and customized workflows, Rezolve.ai streamlines IT management from within the familiar interface of MS Teams.   

DevOps orchestration

Siloed functions and gaps in collaboration between software development and delivery lead to a slower development cycle and market growth. Manual tasks in software deployment and management further add to errors and inconsistencies. 

IT orchestration enables smoother and faster automation throughout the software delivery lifecycle in the following manner:

• Automated code building and testing – orchestration of the building and testing processes to ensure high-quality code is delivered faster
• CI/CD(Continuous integration and continuous delivery) -The process of IT orchestration deals with slow deployment by automating and orchestrating the entire CI/CD pipeline, thus accelerating time to market.

Cloud orchestration

Cloud orchestration automates and coordinates the tasks and resources to optimize the cloud environment for efficiency. 

Cloud orchestration tools enable the following:

• Automated cloud resource provisioning helps you close down manually and spin up cloud resources like servers, storage, and networking.
• Automated configuration management helps you enforce consistent configurations across your cloud resources, ensuring security and optimal performance.

How should a business choose IT orchestration tools?

Selecting the right IT orchestration tool requires careful consideration. Consider the following when you look for a tool: 

• Alignment with your specific needs.
• Evaluation of factors like the complexity of your IT environment, the types of workflows you want to automate, and your budget.
• Good research on popular options and considering tools that integrate with your existing IT infrastructure.
• Scalability to grow alongside your growing organization's needs.

IT Orchestration With Rezolve.ai

With the increasing dependency on IT infrastructure, a robust and unified solution is also paramount. Rezolve.ai stands as an ideal solution for IT orchestration and streamlining IT operations.  It goes beyond basic support with features like no-code automation studio, knowledge base management, and desktop automation. It offers: 

• Task automation
• Conversational ticketing and auto-routing to agents
• Process orchestration includes onboarding and configuring project management software, etc.
• Incident management and audibility
• Advanced analytics and reporting

Rezolve.ai eliminates repetitive work for the IT and HR staff and frees employees to focus on their core roles. It learns from disparate sources like documents, PDFs, websites, URLs, and SharePoint folders, providing instant and accurate resolution to issues. 

It reduces the cost per ticket by 35%, auto-resolves 65% of employee queries and issues, and reduces MTTR by 57%.

Source

Want to streamline your IT operations and empower employees? Contact us to upgrade your IT workflow and book a demo with Rezolve.ai today.

FAQs

1. What is an orchestration tool?

An orchestration tool automates and coordinates multiple IT tasks and workflows. Imagine a conductor leading an orchestra. Similarly, the orchestration tool ensures all the automated tasks work together seamlessly. 

2. What is the difference between orchestration and automation?

While automation focuses on automating individual tasks, orchestration sequences these automated tasks into a specific workflow and provides smooth and automated synchronization. Orchestration is automation has gone a level up.

3. What is an orchestration workflow?

An orchestration workflow is a defined sequence of automated tasks coordinated by an orchestration tool. It's like a recipe outlining the steps needed to achieve a desired outcome.