If your enterprise IT team always seems to be falling behind on tasks and pushing back projects, this might surprise you: It’s probably not because you’re missing automation. You might actually have too much of it fragmented across scripts, playbooks, and platforms that can’t effectively communicate and cooperate with each other.
Many infrastructure teams are working with a range of automation tools to suit different needs and use cases. If you’re using a mix of Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins, or custom bash scripts, and you don’t have a tool capable of cross-silo automation, you might struggle to take the next step in advancing your level of organization-wide orchestration.
Instead, each domain—such as NetOps, DevOps, and InfraOps—has likely developed its own toolchain, processes, and automation priorities. While each tool serves its purpose, the result is an infrastructure that lacks broader coordination, visibility, and control.
And it’s a common problem: 81% of IT leaders say data silos are actively hindering their digital transformation efforts. So while your current automations might have been designed to solve problems, scaling them without a proper plan and resources can still create new challenges.
It’s time for a new approach that goes beyond automating tasks within teams. Cross-silo automation can help you orchestrate processes across domains and throughout your organization. Here’s a look at how it works.
The Silo Problem in Modern IT
Over the past decade, IT operations have become increasingly specialized and more fractured at the same time. Different teams adopted automation to achieve their specific goals, but in the process, they also adopted different tools and patterns. NetOps might run everything through Ansible while DevOps depends on Terraform modules. InfraOps might still resolve change tickets manually through ITSM systems.
The result of these separate strategies is siloed automation, which can look like this:
- A firewall rule might be deployed via a script managed by one team, while the infrastructure supporting that rule is provisioned elsewhere. This limits visibility and coordination for both teams.
- A development team provisions cloud environments independently of the infrastructure team manually tracking usage afterward.
- Multiple teams end up writing redundant scripts to automate the same task in slightly different environments.
Without cross-silo automation, fragmented workflows can introduce risks including:
- Duplicated efforts that cut into valuable engineering time
- Tool inconsistencies causing configuration drift
- Gaps in security caused by variations in access controls and audit practices
This is both inconvenient and unproductive for your organization. If you’re aiming to operate with greater efficiency and agility, adopting cross-silo automation will be a major step forward.
Why Stitching Scripts Together Doesn’t Scale
In an attempt to address this sprawl, many IT teams connect the dots manually by writing glue scripts, chaining playbooks together, or standing up isolated integrations. The issue with these solutions is that they only add to the problem when you need to scale.
Chained automation can be fragile, and scripts break when APIs change. As your infrastructure evolves, once-reliable playbooks might become obsolete. Over time, quick fixes become long-term technical debt.
More importantly, this approach doesn’t scale due to several key issues:
- You don’t have central visibility across workflows
- Automation governance remains a manual chore
- Critical knowledge is undocumented and not widely shared
IT environments are growing more dynamic and distributed, especially in hybrid and multi-cloud setups. For organizations looking to move quickly, patchwork solutions will only be an obstacle that requires custom code and multiple levels of approvals.
Intelliflow: One Control Plane for All Your Automation
Intelliflow was designed to solve this problem. Instead of replacing the tools you already use, it connects them.
It’s a low-code orchestration platform built to facilitate cross-silo automation across NetOps, DevOps, and InfraOps. By layering on top of your existing scripts, tools, and infrastructure, Intelliflow means your teams won’t have to start over from scratch to bring everything into one orchestrated, auditable flow.
Here’s how it works:
- Drag-and-Drop Workflows: Intelliflow has an intuitive interface that helps teams build complex automations using pre-built “intelligent action blocks” so you can easily abstract and reuse what already works.
- Integration with Existing Tools: Intelliflow works collaboratively with platforms like Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins, ServiceNow, and more so you don’t lose the value of automations you already have in place.
- Unified Control Plane: Everything runs through a centralized orchestration layer. So whether you’re pushing a config change, provisioning new infrastructure, or responding to an incident, you’ll always have full visibility across domains.
- Governance by Design: Role-based access control, audit logs, and other built-in protections result in compliance that’s automatic rather than manual.
Intelliflow can significantly change how you approach cross-silo automation and orchestration. It connects the dots between your people, platforms, and playbooks to bring you unified visibility and automation that’s controlled instead of fragmented.
The Business Impact of Cross-Silo Automation
Cross-silo automation supports the work of engineers, but it also has clear and tangible business benefits:
- Faster time to resolution
- Reduced risk of error
- Effortless collaboration
- Automation and orchestration at scale
- More resilient and future-proof infrastructure
Final Thoughts
In years past, siloed automation may have worked for smaller teams managing simpler infrastructures. Now, enterprises are engaged in digital transformations that involve hybrid infrastructure, rising complexity, and constant change. In that environment, cross-silo automation is a clear necessity.
Intelliflow is the tool modern IT teams need to increase efficiency, minimize risk, and scale effectively. If your team is still stitching scripts together and struggling to overcome tool and domain silos, now is the time to consider a more strategic approach.
Want to see how Intelliflow works? Get in touch with our team today.
