The Next Horizon: Automation Virtual Summit 2026
Intelligent Control Plane in Practice: 4 Automic Automation Use Cases
Session recap · Dave Kellermanns
The Bobfather
Bob Schwartz is the CEO of Robert Mark Technologies and has led the company to consistent double-digit growth for the last 10 years. He is an active member of the Workload Automation community and holds a seat on the Broadcom Partner Advisory Committee.
At a Glance:
- Dave Kellermanns urged automation teams to partner with infrastructure teams and close the “value gap” between an empty VM and a working application
- Four Automic Automation use cases: business-ready provisioning, disaster recovery, SAP system copies and AI data pipelines
- Each use case came with a customer result, from three weeks to minutes for provisioning to 85% less manual effort on SAP copies
- Attendees in a live poll ranked hybrid orchestration (46%) and resilience and DR (38%) as top 12-month priorities
Session recap · The Next Horizon: Automation Virtual Summit 2026
The Intelligent Control Plane in Practice: Four Proven Scenarios for Private and Public Cloud
Dave Kellermanns, Global Solution Architect, Broadcom
Spinning up a VM takes minutes. Getting something the business can actually use? That can feel like tracking a package that’s been “out for delivery” since Tuesday.
That gap kicked off Dave Kellermanns’ session at The Next Horizon: Automation Virtual Summit 2026, presented by Automation by Broadcom and Google Cloud on September 24. Dave, a Global Solution Architect at Broadcom, shared four Automic Automation use cases, each with a customer result. Here’s the quick tour.
Provisioning
3 weeks to minutes
End-to-end service delivery at a financial services company, per Dave
DR restoration
Under 2 minutes
Down from several hours at a major digital bank, per Dave
SAP system copies
85% less effort
And 82% faster delivery at a water treatment company, per Dave
Why Automation Teams Should Walk Across the Aisle
Dave’s premise: the next phase of enterprise IT won’t be won on the fastest infrastructure. It will be won on the fastest operational decision cycles. So automation has to be more than a tool for killing one more manual task. It should be the orchestration layer that keeps operations moving end to end.
Infrastructure teams can spin up VMs in minutes, but “business doesn’t want an empty VM. They want a working secure application.” Dave calls that distance the value gap and told automation teams they hold the missing piece: federating the infrastructure team’s segmented scripts and provisioning tools into one workflow. The payoff is fewer manual handoffs and fewer top engineers stuck on ticket queues and post-provisioning triage.
Automation teams also bring governance. Infrastructure teams are pushed to move fast while security and compliance slam the brakes, so Dave offered an “execution firewall”: compliance built into the execution layer, with immutable audit trails for every action. “You are the architects of the intelligent control plane,” Dave told automation teams. For the agentic AI side of that idea, see our recap of Serge Lucio’s session.
Use Case 1: Provisioning That Ends With a Working Service
Provisioning is fast, Dave said, but it stalls on manual last-mile configuration and disjointed tools. Automic federates tools like Ansible and Terraform into a single automated digital assembly line, reaching beyond VMs to public cloud services, air-gapped physical infrastructure and mainframes.
In Dave’s sample workflow, once the VM exists, Automic handles monitoring registration, OS management and cybersecurity deployment with no manual steps, logs the asset in the CMDB in real time and closes the ticket in ServiceNow. An optional step covers Google Cloud, AWS or Azure components.
The customer: A financial services company insourced 8,000 servers into its private cloud to escape a slow, costly outsourcing arrangement, without expanding IT headcount. Self-service portals now deliver full-stack environments, and end-to-end service delivery dropped from three weeks to a matter of minutes. Dave’s takeaway: an automated private cloud can rival public cloud agility.
Use Case 2: Disaster Recovery Without the War Room
VM-level recovery tools are excellent for bit-level copies, Dave said. What they can’t do is restart applications or validate data, and that’s what restoring a business service takes.
That’s disaster recovery automation built for audits as much as outages. Automic turns manual runbooks into push-button, full-stack failovers. It maps application dependencies through the CMDB, spins up isolated environments for frequent failover tests without touching production, assesses application readiness and generates audit-ready compliance scorecards.
The customer: A top-tier digital bank. Dave’s slide listed 21M+ customers, £500k+ an hour in downtime risk and DORA and FCA mandates, and Dave said its manual DR process couldn’t meet them. After the bank encoded its entire DR runbook, service restoration went from several hours to under two minutes, and the war rooms went away. Dave said the project delivers a projected £10M to £25M in annual benefits.
Use Case 3: An SAP LaMa Alternative for System Copies
SAP system copies and refreshes still take weeks of manual, error-prone work, Dave said. SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) users also face a mandatory transition because of the tool’s announced retirement in 2027. Dave presented Automic as a certified, modern alternative.
A developer’s self-service request kicks it off. Automic triggers the snapshots, restores configuration and target data, then handles the notoriously complex post-processing: BDLS rename, printers, RFCs and users. Integrity checks and an ITSM update close it out.
The customer: On Dave’s slide, a water treatment company. Its system copies took 10 man-days of manual work from Basis experts, and typing errors and missed steps caused delays and rework. After automating the workflow end to end, manual effort fell by 85% and delivery got 82% faster.
Use Case 4: AI Data Pipelines You Can Trust
Why do AI initiatives stall? Dave’s answer: models are being fed by chaotic, brittle, ungoverned data pipelines.
Automic orchestrates the whole data lifecycle, replacing fragile scripts with auditable workflows. It pulls from systems of record, calls external tools to clean data and mask PII before any model sees it, and manages indexing, embedding and versioning into private AI knowledge bases that feed RAG and agentic workflows inside the sovereign private cloud boundary.
The customer: A global technology leader was struggling to move its private AI initiative from a localized experiment to a production-ready factory. With a governed data foundation in place, it safely launched agentic workflows that generate customer intelligence reports in minutes.
Which Automic Automation Use Cases Would You Pick First?
Dave closed with three outcomes: accelerate innovation, reduce public cloud risk by giving developers the same agile experience on private cloud, and lower effort and cost with push-button automation in place of manual ticketing.
A live poll that morning asked attendees which intelligent control plane use case matters most over the next 12 months. Orchestration across complex, hybrid infrastructure led with 46%, then business resilience and disaster recovery at 38%. Governance for AI data pipelines and agents drew 17%, and keeping and modernizing SAP in your private cloud drew 0%. Where would your vote have gone?
What This Means for You
Treat Dave’s session as the agenda for your next meeting with the infrastructure team. Which of the four hurts most: the wait after a VM is built, the DR test nobody wants to schedule, the SAP copy marathon, or the AI pipeline held together with scripts? Write down what really happens between request and “done.” That’s your starting point.
For a smaller, very practical example, see how Evertec automated VM rightsizing with Automic and VCF.
After 25 years and 1,500+ engagements, RMT knows where Automic Automation projects get stuck. Want a second set of eyes on where to begin?
Where would you start?
RMT helps Automic teams with exactly this, so let’s find your starting point.
More from the summit
The Next Horizon: Automation Virtual Summit 2026, session by session
- Why AI Projects Fail: Sol Rashidi on the Human Advantage
- MCP Server Security: Agentic AI Without the Chaos
- Intelligent Control Plane in Practice: 4 Automic Automation Use Cases (you’re here)
- Evertec’s VM Rightsizing Automation: From Manual Tickets to One Automic Workflow
- The Orchestration Accountability Gap: Inside the SLA Illusion
- From Black Box to Glass Box: A Blueprint for AI Agent Governance
- The Illusion of Green: Automation Observability Beyond the Return Code
- Broadcom Automation Roadmap: What Shipped and What’s Next