About Automic Automation

Automic Automation is a product suite that provides workload automation for IT services across diverse platforms, applications, and Operation Systems. This includes batch processing and job scheduling, among other capabilities. Automic Automation is technology-agnostic and can therefore interface and interact with virtually any IT ecosystem.

Over the years, enterprises engineer extensive customized IT infrastructures that create islands of automation that are not connected and that require manual input and output. In this fragmented landscape, sharing data, business processes and computing resources across systems requires an enormous effort and is usually unsuccessful. The lack of transparency and visibility prevents efficient monitoring and an early identification of potential problems in your processes. Without an end-to-end view of the entire system, you can neither react quickly nor optimize your operations. Automic Automation provides the visibility, scalability and flexibility needed to respond to these challenges.

Automic Automation is characterized by the following:

Native Clustered Architecture

The Automation Engine (AE) is Automic Automation's backend. In charge of the automation logic, the Automation Engine handles millions of automated tasks per day and stores the data in a centralized database. Because the automation core is centralized and it provides extensive auditing and reporting functionality, Automic Automation ensures transparency and real time information as to what is happening at any given time across the enterprise.

The Automation Engine is connected to Agents, a distributed set of integrations to existing applications (on-premise and cloud). Agents are programs that are installed on the host where automation is required (the automation island, whether this is a platform, an application, an Operation System, and so forth). They run in the background and do not have a user interface.

The Agents execute the commands sent by the Automation Engine and create log files that record what is happening. For example, if the Automation Engine starts a Job in an operating system Agent (a Windows Agent, for instance), the Job is executed in the Windows system. The Agent monitors the Job and reports its status to the Automation Engine. The communication between the Automation Engine and its Agents is bidirectional.

The Automic Web Interface (AWI) is Automic Automation's web-based graphical user interface. In addition to standard browser functions, AWI provides proprietary tools that assist end users in their daily work. Created with the end users in mind, AWI is an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that helps reduce the complexity of designing and configuring automation processes.

For more information about Automic Automation's architecture, see:

Multitenancy

Automic Automation provides out-of-the-box multitenancy. A single instance of the software centrally serves multiple tenants (called Clients). System administrators assign Clients to Agents. Thus, Clients are segregated, self-contained environments that can be configured to depict different business and operational areas.

For more information about the multitenancy capabilities of Automic Automation, see:

Object-Oriented Design

With its object-oriented design, Automic Automation allows a single task definition to run with different parameters on hundreds of target systems as many times as needed. An object is a template that contains configuration settings for a self-contained process (a Job, for example) or for a part of a process (a task that sends an email to the stakeholders in a Workflow).

You define an object only once and reuse it across your system. Suppose you have a backup process that must run on all database servers, which can be located on-premise, in a private cloud or a mix of both. A full backup runs once a week and an incremental backup runs every second day. Instead of having to create hundreds of individual tasks, Automic Automation lets you create and run a single object and reuse it (and, if necessary, customize each usage) in as many processes as needed.

For more information about Automic Automation's objects, see:

Jobs

Jobs are basic building blocks of automation. An Automic Automation Job is a unit of work that is Agent-specific. There are Windows Jobs, UNIX Jobs, SAP Jobs, and so forth. A Job issues an instruction, which is a script, a command, or something else. The execution of a Job triggers some sort of work being performed on a system.

For more information about Automic Automation Jobs, see Jobs (JOBS).

Automating Data Transfer: File Transfers

File Transfers are similar to Jobs but they allow automated Agent-to-Agent processes without an FTP server. They ensure that the right data is sent automatically and securely to the right location at the right time. File Transfers are accurate, consistent and can be fully encrypted along every step of the process. Comprehensive reports guarantee auditing and transparency.

For more information about Automic Automation's file transfer capabilities, see:

Orchestrating Processes: Workflows

Workflows are key players in process automation. They are also objects and they orchestrate the automatic processing of other objects. You assemble processes (objects) in a Workflow and connect them. This way, you determine the sequence with which they will be processed (executed in Automic Automation terminology). By defining specific configuration settings per object in a Workflow, you determine the conditions under which the objects are executed.

For example, a Workflow could do the following: stop an application, update, restart and run reports. These four Jobs must execute in a certain sequence. You insert the Jobs in the Workflow and link them with a line. It is possible to embed a Workflow into another.

For more information about Workflows, see Workflows (JOBP).

Automating Processes: Schedules

Schedules are core automation objects too. Through Schedules, you design event and time-driven task management. You collect tasks in a Schedule object and define the scheduling parameters that will govern regular intervals at which they should be executed.

For more information about Schedules, see:

Calendars

So far, we have described some of the most important executable objects in Automic Automation. However, there are other objects that are not executable but that play an important role in process automation.

Calendars are static objects that provide cycle calculation services. You create a Calendar in which you define cycles (every day, every Monday, first of the month, last day of the year, and so on). You then apply the Calendar to your executable object, which is then automated in accordance with those cycles.

For more information, see:

Automation Engine Scripting

Automic Automation has its own proprietary scripting language to help you code workload processes. For more information about the Automation Engine scripting language, see:

Automatic Processing (Executing)

Once automated processes are designed and scheduled, you execute them. Object execution can be triggered manually or automatically.

For more information, see:

Monitoring and Auditing

Automic Automation provides full reporting and auditing capabilities. When executing objects, the Automation Engine writes comprehensive output files and reports that track all processes. The reports are organized to show what is happening across the enterprise. The can be easily accessed from the UI.

For more information about Automic Automation's auditing capabilities, see:

Analytics

While Automic Automation's reporting and auditing features provide a detailed representation of the status quo of your business processes, Analytics transforms that data into business intelligence. Using Automic Automation's powerful automation objects in dynamic dashboards, Analytics explores and interprets your business data. With this analysis, you can base your decision making on data-driven insight.

For more information, see Using Analytics

Event Processing with Event Engine

The Event Engine is the technology that enables event-driven intelligent automation (IA) in Automic Automation. The Event Engine uses semantic IF-THEN logic—which you define in special IA EVENT objects—to filter external events and then trigger the right actions through executable objects in Automic Automation. With the Event Engine you can set up your system to detect critical business events as they happen and then proactively take action downstream reliably, consistently, and in real-time.

If you apply these mechanisms to power automated closed-loop remediation of common service requests, you can head off critical situations while freeing up your support staff for complex problems.

The Event Engine can filter events coming in from various sources at a rate of up to 50,000 events per second, making it an extremely scalable, real-time automation tool.

For more information, see The Event Engine.

Service Orchestration Capabilities

With its powerful, reliable, and scalable Workflow capabilities and its extensive integration options, Automic Automation can support even the most complex service orchestration scenarios. Service orchestration is the automated coordination of processes that span multiple domains or applications and may also include manual steps, such as human approval or intervention, to provide a service. At the heart of service orchestration is the Workflow. The overall process typically involves multiple Workflows for individual tasks. Nevertheless, one main Workflow orchestrates the tasks across the entire infrastructure. For more information, see About Service Orchestration.