As the world continues to digitally transform — something that found new urgency this year as a result of a global pandemic — enterprises are beginning to incorporate more automation into what they do every day.

But Chris Wright (pictured), senior vice president and chief technology officer of Red Hat Inc., argues that companies need to entirely rethink automation.

“It’s a fundamental part of scaling,” Wright said. “Creating … a business and a mindset around infusing automation into everything you do is a pretty big journey for … the enterprise.”

Wright spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AnsibleFest 2020. They discussed the importance of automation for the future of digital transformation. (* Disclosure below.)

Implementing automation as a journey, not a destination

Automation must be seen as a journey, not a destination, according to Wright. Companies need to be thing about implementing programming interfaces on everything so that they have a programmatic way to interact. Another important step that automation companies need to take: Create enterprise confidence in the benefits of automation.

“When you’re automating … you’re taking tasks away from humans, which are actually error prone, and typing on the keyboard is not always the greatest way to get things done,” Wright said. “[It’s] the confidence that those automation scripts or playbooks are going to do the right things at the right time.”

Because a business is filled with people with domain expertise, everybody brings something to the table when it comes to automation — whether it’s a business analyst or a technologist, according to Wright. This creates a partner ecosystem for automation coming in with critical parts of the technology stack. And to bring this all together, a company needs to have a common way to communicate, which is why Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is crucial.

“A language for communication across all those different cross-functional parts of your business is critical. Choosing that language wisely is part of how you build the end-to-end sort of internalized view of what automation means to your business,” Wright concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AnsibleFest 2020. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for AnsibleFest 2020. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE