Information technology (IT) automation tools help you easily manage IT processes that are scattered across several environments, tools, and technologies. In this guide, you will learn about the top five automation tools for managing IT processes. 

What is IT automation?

With the rise of cloud services and virtualized networks that require swift and complex provisioning, IT process automation is key to helping IT teams deliver services with improved security, consistency, and speed. 

IT automation is the procedure of developing software and systems to replace repeatable processes that require manual intervention. It is a powerful tool that allows IT staff to focus on strategic tasks rather than administrative work and helps provide significant cost savings and business scaling.  

What is automation software?

Automation software is used to set up and repeat processes, instructions, or policies that save time and enable IT staff to devote their energy towards strategic work.

IT automation tools can perform a range of IT processes and tasks, from simple to complex, including provisioning of production-ready infrastructure, configuring applications, and creating networking or security templates and blueprints.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in IT automation helps craft smarter processes that can deal with unpredictable situations.

Also read: The Growing Relevance of Hyperautomation in ITOps

OpCon Automation Platform 

OpCon Automation Platform by SMA Technologies simplifies the execution of important financial operations and helps avoid costly manual errors.

The IT automation software can help you accelerate business growth and digital transformation with workflow management and automation with a simple click, global integration, enhanced security and governance, fully automated disaster recovery, scalability, and simple auditing and reporting capabilities.

Key Differentiators

• With the automation tool, you can eliminate late shifts and odd working hours. 
• Automated clearing house (ACH) processing capabilities include new file detection and automatic schedule initiation; seamless integration with connectors for Correlation, Fiserv, and Symitar; exception handling with self-service automation; and real-time visibility and audit trail maintenance.  
• You can install guided recovery actions and service level agreements (SLAs) for greater flexibility.
• Deliver a more sound user experience with faster processing, and eliminate errors that may result due to manual key entries. 
• With OpCon Self Service, OpCon Vision, and OpCon Deploy, you can build self-service automation workflows, monitor your system from a simple dashboard, and deploy server updates.
• You can fully automate disaster recovery to improve execution, reliability and testing of the complete recovery process. 
• Integrate new processes, replicate workflows, and add new environments to easily scale from thousands to millions of tasks daily. 
• You can run commands on almost any legacy or modern system.

Pricing: Request a demo or contact the SMA Technologies sales team for product pricing details. 

ActiveBatch IT Automation

ActiveBatch IT Automation by Advanced Systems Concepts is a centralized workload automation and job scheduling tool that enables you to orchestrate the technology stack with their low-code Super REST API Adapter and no-code connectors. 

Key Differentiators

• With infinite extensibility, you can connect to any service, application, or server.
• A low code drag-and-drop graphical user interface (GUI) helps you rapidly build streamlined end-to-end processes.
• An in-application knowledge base, proactive support, and a vision for self-healing ensure stability and reliability. 
• A central automation hub for monitoring and scheduling helps business-critical systems work seamlessly with minimal human interference.
• The ActiveBatch Job Scheduler helps you construct and orchestrate cross-functional workflows and handles reporting and notifications, dependency checking, scheduling, and load balancing. 
• With the Super REST API Adapter, you can speedily build secure connections to any service or software with an application programming interface (API), thereby extending automation to any endpoint. 
• ActiveBatch has several data processing, identity management, cloud and virtual, server, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and IT service management (ITSM) integrations, including Hadoop, Active Directory, Microsoft Azure, SharePoint, Dynamics AX, and ServiceNow. 
• Other features include managed file transfers; script lifecycle management; and extract, transform, and load (ETL). 

Pricing: You can request a demo or a price quote today.

Micro Focus Operations Orchestration 

Operations Orchestration (OO) by Micro Focus is a powerful automation and orchestration tool for simple and complex processes. 

Key Differentiators

• You can orchestrate IT processes across environments, tools, and teams—from service request fulfillment and robotic process automation (RPA) to disaster recovery; database integration; cloud service delivery; application deployment; infrastructure automation; and incident remediation. 
• Plug and play content for legacy and modern technologies, such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Office 365, SAP, Oracle, and VMware vCenter. Using integration wizards for REST APIs and web application description language (WADL), you can design content.
• Authoring is made simple with OO, as you can design workflows in an intuitive no-code/low-code visual interface with drag-and-drop from the library, or create integration content with API wizards. 
• You can monitor, schedule, and run workflows at an enterprise scale. Design workflows with error handling, parallel processing, and decision-making logic. 
• The central dashboard enables you to view results in real time.
• RPA robots supported by ML and object recognition help you work on applications that are difficult to automate. The robots adapt to changes, are resilient, and help you build sophisticated automation for any simple or complex use case.  
• CloudSlang is an open source orchestration project by Micro Focus that can help you gain complete control over automation. The free tool helps you address dynamic orchestration application areas for incident remediation, integrate with the development and operations (DevOps) pipeline, and manage infrastructure as a code. 

Pricing: Request a demo or contact the Micro Focus sales team for pricing information. 

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 

VMware vRealize Orchestrator is a state-of-the-art workflow automation tool that automates and simplifies complicated data center infrastructure tasks for improved agility and extensibility. 

Key Differentiators

• The automation software is built with a flexible, open architecture that permits IT operations staff and system administrators to streamline tasks and integrate functions with third-party vendor solutions through workflows. 
• vRealize Orchestrator integrates seamlessly with VMware vRealize Automation and VMware vRealize Suite to further enhance IT agility, operational management, and service delivery efficiency. 
• Build workflows or harness the power of a rich collection of out-of-the-box plugins to extend the principal capabilities of vSphere, vCloud Suite, vRealize Suite, and vRealize Automation across third-party tools, applications, and infrastructure. 
• You can apply agile software development practices and DevOps to accelerate and simplify workflow development. 
• By designing scalable workflows to automate both simple and complex IT processes, you can significantly reduce IT operating expenses as you can execute thousands of workflows simultaneously on single or distributed architectures. 
• The solution provides a REST API to allow other applications to execute workflows. 
• Some tasks you can perform include initiating a system backup, configuring a load balancer, updating a configuration management database (CMDB), generating a work order ticket, and assigning an IP address from an IP address management tool. 

Pricing: Contact VMware to get started. 

Resolve Enterprise IT Automation Platform

Resolve’s Enterprise IT Automation Platform is an intelligent automation and orchestration solution. The platform is designed to provide adaptability to automate simple and complicated processes across your entire IT ecosystem. 

Key Differentiators

• The solution can automate complex tasks like interacting with Watson for natural language processing (NLP), end-to-end patch management, maintaining infrastructure in hybrid cloud deployments and segregated networks, and updating active load balancers.
• You can overcome IT silos and automate processes across your entire IT ecosystem. 
• The solution offers no-code, pre-built automations and out-of-the-box integrations to support hundreds of products from your favorite vendors, including ServiceNow, Cisco, IBM, Google Suite, Microsoft, McAfee, Moogsoft, MySQL, and Slack. 
• You can search their library for thousands of pre-built automations from within the drag-and-drop Automation Designer. The automations can be customized as per your needs.
• You can choose which steps of a process require automation and which steps require human intervention. 
• With knowledge capture tools and decision trees, you can design and document conditional knowledge that will help guide others. 
• Color-coded dashboards help you spot issues immediately and aid in prompt incident resolution. 

Pricing: Download a free trial or request a demo today. 

Choosing Automation Software

OpCon Automation Platform is an ideal solution for financial operation automation. The ActiveBatch IT Automation platform is our pick for process automation and job scheduling. Micro Focus Operations Orchestration unleashes powerful orchestration with superior control and refreshing ease.

VMware vRealize Orchestrator is a workflow automation platform that is designed to simplify the automation of IT tasks. Resolve Enterprise IT Automation Platform is an intelligent IT automation tool for simple and complex processes, including those that cross IT environments and silos.  

The IT automation software mentioned in this guide are the cream of the crop. Dive deeper into their features by visiting respective websites, reading honest customer reviews, and watching YouTube tutorials. 

You can contact company representatives for further product information, including custom pricing. Purchase an IT automation tool that accurately meets your business necessities. 

Read next: Top RPA Tools 2021: Robotic Process Automation Software

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