Automation by the numbers: 11 stats to know – The Enterprisers Project

Automationpervades most other contemporary IT trends. Cloudand cloud-native? Youre talking about automation.SecurityandDevSecOps? Again, youre talking about automation.Talentandculture? Yep, youre still talking about automation.

IT is both in the midst of its own automation transformation and also an indispensable catalyst of organization-wide automation strategies. Its actually difficult to exaggerate the role that automation is playing in businesses and industries of all kinds today. (The automate all the thingsmemehas a kernel of truth to it.)

[ How can automation free up more staff time for innovation? Get the free eBook:Managing IT with Automation. ]

Automations reach extends beyond any single industry, business function, job role, or technology. Lets dig into 11 statistics (and then some) that reflect the outsized influence of automation.

60 percent:Automation-related fears about job security are very real. In aPwC surveyof 32,500 workers worldwide, roughly six out of every 10 (61 percent) of respondents said theyre worried that automation (of all types) is putting many jobs at risk in the future.

[ Also read:Automation vs. IT jobs: 3 ways leaders can address layoff fears. ]

X = Y:Bet you didnt think wed break out the algebra so soon, but here we are:X=Y, where X represents time spent on current tasks at work by humans andYrepresents time spent on current tasks at work by machines. Those numbers will be more or less equal in 2025, according tothe World Economic Forum. Today, people still spend more time on those same tasks than machines.

The organizations Future of Jobs report notes that this balance wont be distributed evenly, however, and work that requires critical thinking and problem-solving will still favor humans: Algorithms and machines will be primarily focused on the tasks of information and data processing and retrieval, administrative tasks, and some aspects of traditional manual labor. The tasks where humans are expected to retain their comparative advantage include managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating, and interacting.

97 million vs. 85 million:The same World Economic Forum report estimates that 85 million jobs will be displaced as a result of that shift in the division of work, with more of it moving to machines. That said, the report also predicts the creation of around 97 million new roles as a result of the same shift toward automation.

77 percent:Terms likereskillingandupskillingmay sound buzzwordy, but the practices they represent are serious: The capabilities required for many of those new roles likely dont exist today. The PwC survey found that most people are willing to learn and then some: 77 percent of respondents said theyre ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, and 40 percent of people reported successfully improving their digital skills during the pandemic.

1/4:While machine learning (ML) and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) underpin a lot of IT automation discussion, its still relatively early days for this (big) category. Approximately one-quarter of respondents in OReillysAI Adoption in the Enterprise 2021report indicated mature AI initiatives, defined in this context as having revenue-generating AI in production. That rate basically remains unchanged compared with OReillys 2020 report. OReilly received three times the number of responses with the same amount of promotion, something the firm attributes to growing interest in AI overall.

[ Related read:Why automation progress stalls: 3 hidden culture challenges. ]

35 percent:Thats the percentage of organizations in the OReilly report that are actively evaluating AI, meaning theyre running a trial or proof of concept. Another 26 percent said theyre considering AI but havent started any formal work. Just 13 percent said theyre not using AI now and arent considering doing so in the foreseeable future.

1:The #1 challenge for these organizations is hiring: There arent enough people with skills in AI, machine learning, and data science. You may think youve heard that line before, but a lack of AI skills only took over the top spot this year, unseating culture challenges (which dropped to number four, suggesting that people are starting to get used to the idea of increasing automation).

That shortage has been predicted for several years; were finally seeing it, writes report author Mike Loukides, VP of content strategy at OReilly Media.

58 percent:The pandemic appears to have sped up automation initiatives rather than slow them down: A 2020 global executivesurvey conducted by Deloittefound a 58 percent increase in intelligent automation initiatives underway compared with the previous year.

73 percent:That meant that nearly three out of four execs (73 percent) said they had an intelligent automation initiative in Deloittes 2020 survey.

Intelligent automation whats that?Definitions of intelligent automation vary, but the term usually refers to a combination of technologies, including but not limited to robotic process automation (RPA), low-code or no-code tools, and AI technologies. The intelligent part usually reflects that technologies like RPA cant learn on their own like a machine learning algorithm, for example.

88 percent:IT automation isnt just about AI and ML it also includes the extensive, expanding roles that automation plays in modern environments. Think in terms of infrastructure as code, configuration management, security automation, container orchestration, and more. Kubernetes is now everyday IT jargon for that very reason. In Red Hat's2021 State of Kubernetes Securityreport, 88 percent of the IT pros surveyed said their organizations are using Kubernetes, with 74 percent using it in production.

74 percent:The State of Kubernetes Security report also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents (74 percent) have adopted DevSecOps. A full 25 percent of organizations said their DevSecOps implementation is in an advanced stage that integrates and automates security throughout their software pipeline.

[ Want to learn more about building and deploying Kubernetes Operators? Get the free O'Reilly eBooks: Kubernetes Operators: Automating the Container Orchestration Platform and Kubernetes patterns for designing cloud-native apps. ]

[ How can automation free up more staff time for innovation? Get the free eBook:Managing IT with Automation. ]

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Automation by the numbers: 11 stats to know - The Enterprisers Project