About Automic Workload Automation

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 Workload Automation (AWA) 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, for example. AWA is technology-agnostic and can therefore interface and interact with virtually any ecosystem.

AWA is characterized by the following:

Native Clustered Architecture

The Automation Engine is the underlying technology of Automic Workload Automation. In charge of the automation logic, the Automation Engine achieves 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, AWA 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 on). 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.

For more information about AWA's architecture, see:

Multi Tenancy

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

For more information about AWA's multi tenant capabilities, see:

Object-Oriented

With its object-oriented design, AWA 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. Think of 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, AWA lets you create and run a single object and reuse it (and, if necessary, customize each usage) in as many processes as needed.

This topic introduces you to some of AWA's core objects, but there are many more. For more information about AWA's objects, see:

Jobs

Jobs are basic building blocks of automation. An AWA Job is a specific 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 AWA 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 AWA's file transfer capabilities, see:

Orchestrating Processes: Workflows

Workflows are one of the most important objects in AWA. 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 AWA 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 Designing Workflows (JOBP).

Automating Processes: Schedules

Schedules are the core automation objects. You use them to 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 AWA. 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 like: 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

AWA 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

AWA 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 AWA's auditing capabilities, see:

Analytics

Analytics has three optional components that can be installed with the Automation Engine. They can be installed on a component by component basis or in their entirety.

Component features are based on the following specialized areas:

Analytics and Reporting

Analytics and Reporting on AWA/ARA data introduced with version 12.

Analytics and Reporting on External Data

Analytics and Reporting is able to pull in data from external sources.

Event Engine

For more information about Analytics, see:Using Analytics

Integration

The Integration guide helps you integrate your third party databases, software, APIs, Webhooks and more with the Automation Engine.

For more information about the guide see: Automic Workload Automation Integration Guide