Find and Stop the Hidden Risks of Legacy Automation

Out-of-date workload automation tools can cause headaches for IT, but they also have wider implications for businesses that shouldn’t be underestimated.
It’s likely you’ve read about what can happen: mammoth fines for data breaches, nightmare flight cancellations and communications outages. These incidents cost millions in revenue and productivity. They cost even more in lost goodwill and trust.

These events often share something that’s not in the spotlight—technology that’s at the center of their processes—legacy scheduling and workload automation tools.

Adapt to Change

Most organizations use job scheduling technology that’s more than 10 years old. In fact, most companies have more than one of these legacy technologies in use. Sure, it’s complicated and risky, but why change? Everything has always worked just fine—until it doesn’t.

According to Accenture Technology Vision 2019, “Persistent change, challenged assumptions, and disruption are now the norm, rather than the exception, in business and society.” Failing to adapt to fast-paced IT changes can be devastating.

There have been numerous IT disasters that can be tied back to processes that involve automation tools that aren’t up to the job or are surrounded by workarounds. Here are just a couple of examples:

• In 2016 Delta Air Lines experienced a painful wakeup call when its old reservation management system crashed, costing the company $150 million, even though it had just spent that same amount upgrading other systems.
• In 2018, on the last day to file income taxes in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website crashed. This event was a nightmare for both taxpayers and the government agency. The culprit in this situation were a few lines of code written in assembly language and automation software that was initially implemented during the Kennedy administration.

No matter what the industry, workload automation and scheduling are the invisible heartbeat of daily business activities. Organizations that process purchases, maintain inventory, track customers and send out invoices all depend on it. Continuing to work with legacy workload automation tools increases business risk at a critical level. To make matters worse, using outdated scheduling tools for a long time builds up technical debt from accumulated quick fixes piled on top of aging underlying architectures. Again, the risks are multiplied by the common practice of using multiple legacy tools.

In contrast, modern workload automation and job scheduling solutions improve speed, accuracy and efficiency of business processes. They eliminate risk from layered workarounds with simple, agile automation architecture and clear process visibility.

As complexity grows, you need streamlined workload automation as your trusted ally at the heart of your business. End the risk of legacy automation now—before an irreversible incident happens.

Read the new eBook The Hidden Costs of Legacy IT Automation to learn more.

See what’s possible right now. Try the world’s only cloud-based enterprise solution for job scheduling and process automation today. Get started now with a free trial of Redwood’s RunMyJobs workload automation. You’ll be able to use the service for 30 days with support and help from Redwood.