Today we live in a technology dependent world with a global annual spend on IT and communications reaching a massive £1.9 trillion. IT systems are relied on heavily to carry out a range of tasks from the rudimentary to the most critical, and glitches in the system can result in a company operations coming to a standstill. The time needed to invest in managing a company’s IT system is vast and as a result over the past couple of decades we have seen a trend for companies to move their IT function overseas in order to help solve their IT woes in a cost effective and efficient manner. Even though outsourcing is recognised as the traditional solution to this generational problem autonomics is fast becoming a viable and attractive alternative to the norm.

Conceptually autonomics works in a very similar way to the human immune system. It regulates and facilitates an organisations’ IT functions with the ability to recover, self heal from a malfunction and build immunity against the same attack in the future. The system observes and replicates processes which would usually be carried out by humans and identifies replicates and fixes problems without the need for human intervention.

The main benefit of autonomics is that the IT department changes from being just a service department into a potential revenue generator. This is because it reduces the in-house man hours originally required to oversee the routine parts of the job and frees up time to allocate to innovating and improving. IT systems. Autonomics’ real-time response to any IT related issues also allows staff to organise their time more efficiently as they will no longer have to spend time waiting for staff to resolve IT problems.

Outsourcing may still be considered the traditional approach to ensuring a functioning IT system but environmental and economic shifts are slowly tarnishing its reputation for being cost effective and reliable. Countries which were once known for their cheap labour have fallen victim to wage inflation and sourcing a skilled work force has become increasingly difficult in the recent years due to competition for talent intensifying. Autonomics offers organisations an alternative to overcoming these shifting paradigms, reducing dependency on a human workforce to maintain complex systems and in turn reducing overall costs for organisations.

Even though IT outsourcing continues to grow, the future for autonomics is looking bright as businesses are recognising the benefits it can offer in terms of flexibility, speed and reliability. Whilst autonomics won’t replace outsourcing all together it will be interesting to see exactly how the two will coexist and enhance a business’s processes and procedures.