The New Automation Mindset

Foreword

In my over 45 years in the IT industry, including the 25 I spent as a Gartner analyst, I was always intrigued by integration and automation. Many decades ago, when, after several days of work, I was finally able to connect an Olivetti system with an IBM mainframe, I realized how making different systems work together can deliver business benefits greater than the sum of the parts. In that case it was about helping a local public authority in Italy automate a particularly important business process, but since then I helped hundreds, if not thousands of organizations worldwide to devise what was the best way for them to sort out their thorny integration and automation problems to deliver business value.

My focus on this topic inevitably led me to cross paths with Vijay Tella, one of the pioneers in this space. As a Gartner analyst, I tracked Vijay's innovations at TIBCO, Oracle, and most recently Workato. Vijay's uncommon combination of entrepreneurship, business acumen, industry vision, leadership, open‐minded attitude, and restraint made it very easy for me to establish a relationship with him that goes well beyond professional respect and the stereotypical love/hate rapport between an IT vendor and an analyst. It helps that Vijay and I share passions other than integration and automation: good food, fine wine, bicycles, and my home country: Italy.

In addition, Vijay and I also agree about many points of view about the role and the nature of IT, many of which are reflected ...