Pat's Blog: Adventures in Automation

I’m Pat Cameron, Director of Automation Technology at Skybot Software. I’ve been in the IT business for over 25 years and on the automation side for 12 years. In whatever position I’ve held, I’ve always enjoyed working with the users of the systems most of all and helping them solve problems. In a previous life as an Operations Manager at a MN hospital, I assisted with the implementation of the first online, real-time registration, billing, and ancillary services system to be installed at the hospital. I also trained the nursing staff, registration, and billing staff on the new system. It was quite a project and took a couple years to complete, but the results improved people’s lives and solved problems. Tasks that were done manually were now done electronically resulting in fewer mistakes, less time, and, ultimately, better service for patients.

Workflows for Simple File Transfers

I’m working with a new customer who currently runs hundreds of file transfers each day using a scheduler that isn’t very intuitive and has inadequate built-in error handling.

Automating a process without proper controls or automatic notification is almost worse than doing it manually.

Simple File Transfer Process

Is DevOps More Than a Passing Fad?

What is DevOps?

DevOps was the hot topic at the Gartner IT Infrastructure and Operations conference in June.

A number of sessions referred to DevOps, but Cameron Haight, Research Vice President at Gartner, presented it in the most straightforward and clever way.

Cameron’s presentation really made sense, so I thought I’d share some of what I learned with you...

6 Steps to Calculating ROI for your Workload Automation Tool

According to InformationWeek's latest survey on IT spending priorities, many IT departments are overpromising the ROI for their top projects. Talk about bad press.

If you're hoping to start an automation project in 3rd quarter, a quick return helps justify the money, time, and effort involved in the purchase and implementation of a workload automation (WLA) tool.

Follow these 6 steps and use the ROI Calculator below to get the data you need to please your CFO.

6 Pieces of the IT Pie

6 Pieces of the IT Pie to be discussed at this year's Solutions Summit in Minneapolis, MN. Enterprise scheduling represents only one piece of the pie called Information Technology operations. Other slices include security, system monitoring, backups, data access, and interfaces to applications.

Switching Schedulers? 5 Steps to a Smooth Transition

5 steps to a smooth transition when switching enterprise schedulers. I love visiting customers and discussing their automation needs. I can talk to them on the phone and hold remote training sessions or product demo sessions, but there’s nothing like being in the same room. Communication flows more easily, and I get a better idea of how they’re running their operations while sharing a cup of coffee.

I spent a couple hours with a local customer on Friday who is moving from a scheduler that they’ve had in place for several years to Skybot Scheduler. This move is just one piece of a bigger project moving their data center from one site to another. The project is going to keep them very busy this summer, so what steps can be taken to ease the scheduler transition for them?