Digital business automation software can help companies scale operations, improve customer experiences and control costs. Most business and IT leaders have moved on from understanding the business value of automation to how best to implement it. Part of implementation success is choosing the right deployment environment. The following three options fit different business needs:

• On premises. Some firms and government agencies keep all of their data on site, either because their mission requires it or because they have yet to migrate to cloud-based data.
• Hybrid cloud. By using containers, firms can run software in their own cloud or contract with a vendor for cloud hosting across several private or public clouds.
• SaaS. Data centers provide cloud hosting of data in a secure environment, with all infrastructure managed by the vendor.

Whether you choose one or any combination of the three, look for flexibility and common automation software, tools and capabilities that work across all hosting environments.

What’s new: Deploying on the cloud of your choice

IBM recently introduced a new hybrid cloud deployment option for its digital business automation platform called IBM Cloud Pak for Automation. This deployment of the digital business automation platform is designed to overcome the challenges that hybrid cloud environments present by delivering several key benefits:

• Run on the cloud of your choice. Businesses have the freedom to manage digital business automation solutions consistently within the Kubernetes environment of their choice.
• Ensure consistency in virtualization. Enterprises can manage containers and virtual machines consistently in a single operating environment.
• Use a common deployment interface. Companies can deploy one or more automation capabilities simultaneously using a single tool.
• Gain operational insights. Wherever the platform automates work to increase efficiency, it also aggregates large amounts of data. There’s great business growth potential in that data, but how can businesses make sense of it? The IBM Cloud Pak includes a capability that provides an analytical window into company data by capturing data across the platform. For example, a large bank in South America needed better visibility and insights into its data to further improve operations. By using the analytics capability within the platform, the bank can gain visibility into their operations across various teams. The bank’s data scientists are now in the process of applying machine learning to the operational data in combination with other business data to gather additional insights into business operations.

Watch this intro video to learn more.

The advantages of a strong automation platform

Leading-edge automation uses a platform so users can automate most types of work at scale and get the greatest deployment and purchasing flexibility.

With the IBM automation platform – on which the IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is the latest deployment option – businesses can do the following:

• Build business automation services to digitize and scale work. For example, companies can use the tool to build a workflow service that automates an end-to-end process, including a mix of straight-through processing and human interaction.
• Create business apps for users that interact with enterprise data, digital agents and business automation services. For example, a financial services company could develop an app for a loan officer to open, manage and progress loans as part of a workflow.
• Build and deploy intelligent digital agents to automate human tasks. For example, the IBM Cloud Pak for Automation can help a company create an robotic process automation (RPA) bot that calls a decision service to automate customer onboarding.
• Run it everywhere – deploy all or part of the IBM automation platform on-premises, on hybrid cloud, or managed on the IBM cloud (SaaS).
• Start with just one market-leading capability, like task or decision automation, and evolve from there.

Learn more about IBM Cloud Pak for Automation.