A thorough understanding of new technology enables us to use these tools to their full advantage. There is no better clue into how things will progress than looking at the trends that got us to where we are today. We’ll provide a quick history of how automation evolved in the world of business over the years and use this as a rubric to look forward to what’s next.

A Brief History of Business Automation

At the heart of a lot of these automation products is a workflow engine. But even though the basic idea remains the same, the maturity of these tools has drastically evolved over the years.

The Era of Mainframes

The first automation tools of the 1960s and 1970s came in the form of job scheduling products that batched jobs on time-based triggers that ran overnight. And even though these products took a basic approach to managing dependencies and running batch processes, they were a huge step in the right direction.

Distributed Era

The 1980s expanded the breadth of automated tools by offering the ability to operate in data centers. Examples of these types of systems include Unix, Windows and Linux. These tools essentially performed the same functions as their earlier versions with the addition of running their scripts across distributed servers.

The Era of the Internet

In the 1990s, applications evolved into new architectures and the automation systems were forced to evolve along with them.

These new systems operated all day, every day. This is the advent of workload automation, which is an evolution of job scheduling. Functions that were previously driven by time and date were now event-based. Automation began to touch other areas of business like open service desk tickets and integrations into ERP systems instead of just batch jobs.

Virtualization Era

The next step was to move past simply automating application components and to begin automating human processes. This included provisioning and decommissioning new systems, IT service management (such as patching and rebooting servers) and runbook automation.

This era saw the evolution of job scheduling to workload automation and finally to orchestration.

Era of the Public Cloud

At this point, automation splintered into two camps: Domain-specific automation solutions and orchestrators.

The orchestrators offered solutions for deploying applications (think CI/CD automation), provisioning and decommissioning infrastructure and moving beyond the IT realm and into automating business processes.

At their core, these automated solutions still served the same functions. They are workflow engines with a series of adapters that talk to APIs to tell the system how to do something and human interfaces enable workers to interact with them. The only difference is that now they have become domain-specific.

Moving Into the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to tell that the next phase of automation is going to involve the increased utilization of AI. However, the degree to which this will impact day-to-day operations will remain to be seen.

But even if AI doesn’t solve all of the world’s problems, it can still be extremely useful in the automation space. Initially, we’re going to see that AI systems are very good at task automation: a single task with relatively straightforward instructions.

This will replace workflow engines by streamlining the process of defining steps toward accomplishing a task but will still need adapters to be wired in so it can take action. It will eventually be able to build a workflow, kick off processes, and understand completion statuses.

Robotic process automation will be the first tools to be displaced. Complex workflows that enable someone to enter a prompt like, “I want you to automate my meter to close process in SAP,” will take a bit longer. Wiring these tools to the back system to enable it to take action will come after that.

3 Tips to Prepare for the Future of Automation

The world of automation never stops moving forward and if you don’t keep up, you’ll be left behind. Here are three things to keep in mind as you prepare for the future.

Don’t Fear AI

There’s a tendency for workers to catastrophize AI tools in fear that it will eliminate their jobs. But this is the wrong way to look at it. AI won’t replace you—it’s a tool that should be leveraged for its capacity to increase your value in the workspace. Learn to harness the capabilities of AI automation to remain competitive as the market evolves, otherwise you risk becoming obsolete.

Focus on Simple Task Automation for Now

AI will get better over time, but you need to be realistic about its current capabilities. Simple task automation doesn’t require complicated backend adapters. Find ways for this to aid you in your daily tasks to automate simple, repetitive tasks. Stay on top of changes as this evolves over time to automate more complex processes.

Leverage a Full Automation Fabric Strategy

Your automation strategy should avoid focusing solely on AI tools. There are plenty of automated tools that don’t use AI to perform very useful functions. The tools you source today will set you up for the future, so it’s important to find a full suite of automation tools that can handle the majority of your automation needs. Utilizing a singular vendor ensures these tools work together seamlessly and avoids coverage gaps. Automation fabrics bring all this together by creating a cohesive and integrated framework that connects automation tools, processes, and data sources.

Embrace Change to Set Yourself Up for a Successful Future

We’re entering a new phase of automation, but it’s important to avoid becoming laser-focused on AI.

These new tools will be transformative. There’s also a chance they are overhyped. Focus on streamlining your processes and staying on top of new capabilities as they enter the marketplace.