The Stonebranch Top 10: Most Popular IT Automation Research, Success Stories, Reports, and More from 2023

As we all gear up for a new year of IT automation and orchestration innovation, let’s take a moment to reflect on the resources that resonated most with the Stonebranch community in 2023.

There’s one theme that unifies the blog posts, videos, white papers, and success stories below: change for the better. Each of these resources focuses on how enterprises and their I&O leaders can harness IT automation tools for better outcomes and a stronger return on investment. In other words, it’s not about us — it’s all about you, and what you and your organizations need to meet today’s challenges and capitalize on opportunities.

Here are some of 2023’s top-performing blog posts, videos, whitepapers, and more that helped IT professionals like you orchestrate the universe:

1. Top Research: Stonebranch 2023 Global State of IT Automation Report

This comprehensive annual report uncovers the latest trends, best practices, and benchmarks for IT automation and orchestration across various fields, including cloud, data pipelines, IT operations, and self-service enablement. It's a must-read for anyone looking to stay ahead of the curve in IT automation.

You can also watch the research results webinar to get key highlights and expert commentary on the report.

2. Top Success Story: Roche on How to Take Full Advantage of SAP with a SOAP

In this video testimonial, discover how Roche uses Stonebranch UAC to centrally orchestrate the deployment of SAP S/4HANA across multiple global businesses and implementations. Follow their journey, from their conversion to their future-forward strategies and best practices.

Colgate-Palmolive has a great story too — watch their video testimonial to learn the key factors of their digital transformation initiative, and why a SaaS-based automation solution was a foundational requirement.

3. Top Event: Stonebranch Online 2023

Stonebranch Online is a multi-week virtual education forum that features live presentations and demonstrations on topics related to IT automation, orchestration, and digital transformation. This year’s event kicked off with a keynote session that featured expert discussions and demonstrations that explored what it really means to Orchestrate the Universe.

Short on time? Check out these nine insights from the event — each takes little more than a minute to watch.

4. Top Whitepaper: Survive Your Workload Automation Conversion

If you’re thinking about making the switch to a more modern workload automation (WLA) solution, this paper is for you. It covers the factors that indicate when a change is necessary, the primary challenges involved, and key strategies for managing risk and maximizing benefits. It also includes important questions to ask prospective vendors and highlights the advantages of using automated conversion tools.

If reviewing prospective vendors is part of your 2024 plan, download the request-for-proposal (RFP) template to help make sure you ask the right questions.

5. Top Data Sheet: Cloud Automation

Cloud automation remains a trending topic — and challenge — for many enterprise IT leaders. This data sheet explains the Stonebranch solution to orchestrate automation across cloud, on-premises, and containerized environments. With Universal Automation Center (UAC), you can simplify cloud migrations, deliver cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and support citizen automators. The platform offers native managed file transfer (MFT) capabilities, role-based access control, a drag-and-drop workflow designer, and a marketplace of prebuilt integrations.

The Cloud Automation Use Cases whitepaper dives deeper into the subject. It highlights seven ways enterprises are successfully orchestrating workflows across their multi-cloud and hybrid IT environments.

6. Top Product Training: How to Orchestrate Data Pipelines

This detailed walkthrough demonstrates how a DataOps team can leverage UAC to centrally orchestrate each stage of their data pipelines, including data ingestion, storage, and delivery. It goes step-by-step through the process of connecting diverse applications (like Informatica, Snowflake, Azure, Databricks, Tableau, and AWS) into a real-time automation data flow. The techniques shown in the video can easily be applied to machine learning (ML) models and MLOps workflows as well!

On the other hand, sometimes it’s good to just start at the beginning. The product training video on How to Create a Task — the basic building block of any automated workload or workflow — is a perennial favorite. 

7. Top On-Demand Webinar: New Observability and Telemetry Features in UAC 7.5

UAC 7.5’s integration with OpenTelemetry is a gamechanger in enhancing observability. In this demonstration of UAC’s newest features, Stonebranch experts Colin Cocksedge and Mike Scher showcase how to connect and leverage telemetry data within UAC, as well as third-party application performance monitoring (APM) and data visualization tools.

Another popular webinar highlights the Stonebranch jobs-as-code solution, which leverages Git repositories for version control of UAC job configurations, to enable continuous delivery and best practices like testing and CI/CD.

8. Top Blog Post: Airflow Event-Based Triggers with Stonebranch

Airflow is a popular open-source workflow management platform but is limited in its ability to automate in real-time. This blog post details how Airflow triggers events, explores how to UAC uses an API to connect to Airflow to simplify event-based automation, and highlights the benefits of leveraging UAC with or without Airflow.

Many people also read the summary of Gartner's 2023 Hype Cycle for I&O Automation, which highlights the technologies everyone is talking about, particularly those initiating significant change. It also covers the implications of these technologies and what implementation could mean for IT professionals and businesses.

9. Top Technical Brief: Automation for Mainframe Modernization

Infrastructure modernization — and more specifically, mainframe modernization — continues to be top-of-mind for IT leaders. This technical brief details the importance of migrating mainframe-centric job schedulers to a modern platform to help support the broader modernization initiative and future operations. The brief covers the reasons to migrate, what the conversion process entails, how to transfer workflows and tasks, and the additional automation capabilities to be gained.

For those looking for something a little less technical, this blog post offers an executive summary on the subject. 

10. Top Social Post: Stonebranch Wins Top Workplace Award 

Celebrating our successes is often just as important as sharing our knowledge. The announcement that Stonebranch had once again been recognized as a Top Workplace earned many cheers on LinkedIn. Based entirely on employee feedback, this award proves that great teams do great work!

Continuing on the #StonebranchLife theme, some of our most popular social posts featured pictures from team-building events held in Frankfurt, Athens, and Skopje.

Whether you're just starting your automation journey or looking to refine your existing strategy, Stonebranch offers a wealth of resources to empower your success. Leverage the insights and best practices shared in these popular materials to transform your IT operations and achieve optimal efficiency, agility, and control.

Start exploring today and unlock the power of automation with Stonebranch!