IT Orchestration: 7 Ways It Improves Your Enterprise Processes

Businesses struggle with complex IT ecosystems. Facing increasing market pressures and constant change, they often add new solutions to solve problems. But over time, the complex systems used to automate and optimize business processes lead to significant technical debt (and management nightmares).

IT orchestration helps businesses manage their IT seamlessly. It simplifies business processes, optimizes resource use, extends existing IT investments, and enhances efficiency. This blog will cover what IT orchestration is and seven key benefits IT orchestration platforms can bring to a business.

IT orchestration refers to the automated configuration, management, and coordination of software applications and hardware systems, applications, and services. With IT orchestration, organizations can manage interdependent tasks across different environments to build a cohesive workflow. For example, a financial services firm managing loan applications could use IT orchestration tools to intake customer applications, classify the documents and extract critical data with AI, transfer data across systems, and hand off work requiring human intervention like making decisions and communicating with customers.

IT orchestration connects software systems, automation tools, data, and people in seamless workflows and processes. This reduces manual intervention, minimizes errors, and accelerates the execution of routine tasks, leading to significant time savings.

Put simply, automation controls individual tasks, and orchestration controls complex workflows. With automation, you offload manual tasks like document processing, data entry, or email generation to digital workers. With orchestration, you place these pieces in the context of a wider workflow or process such as billing, customer service, or loan decisioning.

IT orchestration overlaps with process automation and IT automation tools.  Automation tools focus on offloading manual tasks with technologies like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation (RPA) bots, or business rules. IT orchestration, on the other hand, connects the dots between all these technologies and systems to help direct fuller workflows and processes. 

Orchestration and automation complement each other. And recent trends have shown organizations increasingly consolidating their orchestration and automation technologies. This new trend is called business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT). BOAT platforms combine tools like business process automation, robotic process automation, AI, and low-code in a single place, simplifying IT ecosystems and reducing costs.

So what makes IT orchestration so critical for organizations? Here are seven powerful benefits.

With the right IT orchestration tools, enterprises can scale their operations as demand grows. Enterprise-grade tools allow you to automate end-to-end processes and complex tasks as well as roll out new solutions when market conditions change. And each new solution will fit into a unified, cohesive whole, minimizing additional technical overhead. Whether deploying new applications, scaling infrastructure, or adjusting resources, orchestration tools ensure changes are implemented efficiently without disrupting ongoing processes.

IT orchestration excels at optimizing and directing resources across the enterprise. By automating the management of resources such as servers, storage, and networks, orchestration tools ensure enterprises use resources efficiently, reducing waste and lowering operational costs. 

But this doesn’t stop at digital resources. By orchestrating complex workflows and systems, you can ensure employees only receive tasks requiring human intervention. In short, IT orchestration coordinates efficient usage of both digital and human resources.

IT orchestration plays a crucial role in maintaining compliance and enhancing security. The right process platforms are backed by strong security practices and a number of compliance certifications. This helps ensure new applications and workflows continue reinforcing security best practices and minimize any additional compliance burdens.

Managing IT infrastructure can quickly get out of hand. As enterprises grow, so does their overhead. IT orchestration helps seamlessly integrate disparate systems and funnel work between them. Plus, with low-code tools, teams can extend the functionality of their existing software without having to add new solutions into the mix. By streamlining deployment, configuration management, and ongoing maintenance of infrastructure components, orchestration tools simplify complex processes, reduce downtime, and improve reliability.

IT orchestration tools facilitate collaboration by providing a unified platform where different teams can work together seamlessly. IT, development, and security teams can work to deploy new applications and workflows via a unified DevSecOps environment. And business teams can better collaborate when their IT systems automatically send the right tasks to the right team members at the right time. No matter whether you’re on the tech side or the business side, orchestration keeps everyone on the same page, leading to better coordination and faster issue resolution.

In a competitive environment, speed is of the essence. IT orchestration helps enterprises accelerate their time to market by speeding up development, deployment, and management of applications and services. Using the right low-code tools, teams can modify their process and workflow orchestrations rapidly, allowing them to adapt applications and processes to meet any challenge in record time.

IT teams bring tremendous value to the business. They facilitate change and transformation—from bringing new products to market to optimizing processes internally. By using IT orchestration, these teams can increase productivity, reduce ongoing costs, and respond to changes in the market fast. This allows IT to demonstrate real, tangible results.

IT orchestration enhances enterprise operations by creating a streamlined, responsive, and efficient IT environment. It bridges the gap between disparate systems, automates repetitive tasks, and optimizes resources, all while ensuring compliance and security. By unifying processes, people, and technology, IT orchestration not only improves operational efficiency but also empowers organizations to innovate and respond to changing business needs more efficiently. 

Selecting the right IT orchestration tools is crucial for maximizing these benefits. When evaluating tools, consider factors such as seamless integration with existing systems, scalability, security features, and support for infrastructure orchestration. The right tools can make the difference between a disjointed operation and a well-orchestrated, agile enterprise.