Maximizing Efficiency: How SOAP Can Transform Your Enterprise Automation Strategy

Rajeev Kumar, Automation Product Leader at Broadcom, explores the 2023 Gartner® Market Guide for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms. He reveals how Automation from Broadcom embraces the concepts of SOAP, driving a modern workload automation strategy.

“By year-end 2025, 80% of organizations currently delivering workload automation will be using SOAPs to orchestrate workloads across IT and business domains.” That is the strategic planning assumption from the Gartner Market Guide for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms Market Guide, published in January 2023.

So why are organizations channelling so much effort towards service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAPs)? The answer, as is so often the case, is the adoption of cloud services and increased data initiatives.

Let’s start with a brief definition. As per the Gartner report, SOAPs enable I&O leaders (including IT Operations, Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps and other Automation teams) to design and implement business services. These platforms combine workflow orchestration, workload automation and resource provisioning across an organization’s hybrid digital infrastructure.

Part of the reason for their popularity is the impact on operational efficiency. Workload Automation solutions have traditionally undertaken the ‘heavy-lifting’ of complex workloads across hybrid infrastructures, reducing the cost and complexity of managing mission-critical business processes, while ensuring consistent and reliable service delivery.

The report further states that “SOAPs provide a unified administration console and an orchestration engine to manage workloads and data pipelines and to enable event-driven application workflows. Most tools expose APIs enabling scheduling batch processes, monitoring task statuses and alerting users when new events are triggered and can be integrated into DevOps pipelines to increase delivery velocity.”

According to Gartner, “SOAPs not only eliminate repetitive and manual tasks, but also enhance business agility.”

Modernizing Automation

We believe automation from Broadcom is ahead of the game here. As per Gartner, SOAPs have six key differentiating capabilities (see Figure 1) and we feel Automation by Broadcom delivers on every one of these six characteristics, continually evolving to meet the needs of cloud-based workloads, real-time automation observability and response.

Figure 1: Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms; Gartner Market Guide for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms Market Guide, Chris Saunderson, Daniel Betts, Hassan Ennaciri, Published 23 January 2023 - ID G00780814

 Here’s how.

Manage Data Flows

Integrated managed file transfer in Automation by Broadcom ensures secure, reliable file exchange between automated systems. Purpose-built integrations with Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud data services as well as several big data and ETL tools enable low-code construction of data pipelines. When data orchestration is achieved through multiple point automation and pipeline tools, Automation by Broadcom enables deeper cross-tool visibility of data pipelines in real-time with preemptive issue management.

Workflow Orchestration

Automation by Broadcom offers one, unified automation platform for distributed, business applications and other automation use cases, for both on-premises and cloud infrastructures. It eliminates the complexity associated with automating workflows across different applications, infrastructure domains, and other point automation tools. Users benefit from one, intuitive graphical flow designer to design workflows, visualize interdependencies and connect disparate tasks and data sources for end-to-end business services.

Event-Driven Automation

Automation by Broadcom provides event-driven automation, with built-in event sensors for JMX, JMS, file triggers, text file monitoring, IP monitoring, process monitoring, disk space and MQSeries. This way, Automation by Broadcom senses an input trigger, validates it against configured rules and policies and responds with the appropriate action. An integrated event engine also enables sophisticated automation policies based on business events.

Scheduling, Monitoring, Visibility and Alerting

Automation by Broadcom offers advanced job scheduling, real-time status monitoring for scheduled and event-driven jobs, cross-tool and cross-vendor visibility of job streams when multiple automation tools are involved, and advanced alerting including ITSM ticket creation. The predictive identification of potential risks to services through a central monitoring console helps improve SLAs and drives operational excellence.

Self-Service Workflow Orchestration

Users can request and execute workload processing that is controlled by workload policy and governance processes. A self-service web-based UI administration console – with role-based access controls – enables them to manage the visibility of their automation workflows. Granular security control also takes care of compliance, security, and audit trails.

Resource Provisioning

Modern enterprises require quick scaling of compute, network and storage resources in the cloud and/or on-premises for efficient workload processing. Using Automation by Broadcom, organizations can streamline efforts to create, deploy and decommission environments in public and private clouds. The solutions also offer the flexibility to automate the provisioning of Kubernetes and OpenShift deployments.

Gartner Market Guide recommendation states: “Use investment in SOAPs to drive digital innovation and business agility, thus treating automation as a critical enabler of IT and business value.”

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