Dive Brief:

• More than 70% of respondents to a new survey from BMC Software believe businesses that do not embrace IT automation to achieve digital business goals within the next five years will no longer be around in 10 years.

• The study also found 92% of respondents agree that demands for new sources of revenue create a unique competitive advantage and operational excellence has created huge pressure to compete digitally. BMC surveyed more than 650 IT decision makers across 12 countries for the report. 

• By 2020, 94% of IT decision makers expect automation to spread from IT departments into all areas of business. The top three areas of investment priority in the next two years are containerization, workload automation/scheduling and DevOps.

Dive Insight:

Automation has become a must have for companies instead of a nice to have. For example, as companies increasingly use hybrid cloud capabilities, IT environments become more complex. To manage that complexity effectively and achieve digital business objectives, businesses will need to automate.

Many think that only through IT automation will companies have the time and bandwidth to focus on their broader digital transformation efforts and business goals.

Automation is likely to save companies money that can be reinvested back into the business. A recent McKinsey study found almost all occupations — blue collar and white collar — have potential for some automation, which could result in a savings of about $16 trillion in wages per year.