Just like Christmas, we have all been waiting expectantly for it to happen and finally the day is here. The next great installment of AutoSys Workload Automation went GA (Generally Available) on June 26th.
Firstly we need to thank the legion of customers that helped in the Beta Program for this release, without them we would not have so much confidence in the availability of this release. Thanks to their efforts and of course the army of engineers and product managers that designed and built it, it is now time for you to be planning to upgrade.
As with all major releases we brief analysts and elicit their feedback, they have their ear to the ground to a much wider market and also the technological advances coming down the pipe to the consumers of automation.
Dan Twing, President and Chief Operating Officer of Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is responsible for developing and executing strategic market research, delivering value to IT organizations through consulting engagements, and directing product developments and marketing efforts. After the briefing he commented “The advancements made in AutoSys v12 will benefit the broad AutoSys community, especially the enhancements to simplify adoption of cloud based applications into existing workload automation policies. The updating and improvements to the core architecture of the product is a demonstration from Broadcom of the long term future of the product and will certainly support customers’ digital transformations. “.
What’s in the release
To support the next decade of development for AutoSys Workload Automation there has been a significant amount of work performed in revamping the architecture of the product, this was essential to set the solid foundations we need for future releases. Not sexy for the headlines of releasing products but critical to be able to provide a long-term future with significant advancements over the coming years.
Beyond this, the release follows four main themes, there are lots of other things that have been improved or fixed as part of this release, remember to read the release notes after downloading, but the main themes were:
Automate in the cloud:
The new release enables clients to easily expand their automation policies to the cloud based services that businesses are consuming today. Allowing companies to quickly adopt these new technologies and expand the high quality service that IT Operations already provides to these new technologies.
Enhancing Security:
The product now leverages much stronger encryption services for all communications and allows you to integrate with additional Privileged Access Management systems enabling users to integrate into the corporate security system and harden communications against intrusion.
Providing Automation As Code:
Extending the REST APIs with CLI capabilities, such as JIL and autorep, to enable increased agility within modern IT organizations. This new automation-as-code enhances productivity and innovation by allowing users to define and maintain automation policies in the IDE of their choice.
Lower TCO:
This release also focuses on reducing administration costs and simplifying operational activity to drive down the total cost of ownership. Making installation & upgrades easy through a single image and allowing agents to be upgraded centrally help in product administration, and simplifying the mechanism to rename jobs en-mass are only a few of the improvements designed to make it easier and cheaper to run AutoSys. In addition we have added the support of SQL Server on Linux as a repository to manage licensing costs.
Why does that matter
IT Operations leaders have invested in AutoSys Workload Automation to deliver exceptional services at the right cost. This new release demonstrates Broadcom’s commitment to the product both today and for the future.
This new major release opens new horizons for automation with the ability to easily control the latest cloud based services and include them within your existing automation policies. Providing automation-as-code to enhance productivity and innovation by allowing users to define and maintain automation policies in the IDE of their choice through RESTful web service APIs.
Importantly, driving down TCO by simplifying installation, upgrades, providing centralized agent upgrades, and through supporting SQL Server on Linux as a repository for AutoSys.
Where to go next
We held a webinar on June 25 where Dan Shannon, the Product Manager for AutoSys went through the details of everything in the new release, if you missed it you can watch a replay here.