Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Today, managing a data center requires striking a balance between cost, security, and performance. Long-term costs are a different matter, even though upfront capital expenditures (CapEx) like real estate and hardware are well-known and reasonably predictable. According to industry surveys, operational expenses (OpEx), which include system provisioning, patching, compliance, and troubleshooting, steadily increase over time and frequently exceed 50% of total cost of ownership (TCO) by the third year.

Many IT teams underestimate the true cost of managing infrastructure themselves. At first glance, DIY tools may seem like a cost-effective and flexible solution — but the workflows you build and manage with in-house tooling reveal a host of hidden expenses, inefficiencies, and risks as your IT scales. While it’s not a new problem, it’s one that’s revealing itself more and more clearly as time goes on.

In a traditional IT environment, the service catalog has long functioned as a directory—an online menu of things users can ask IT for. Need a new laptop? Submit a ticket. Need Salesforce access? File a request. Every need, every problem, every question gets funneled into a form, queued up for manual processing, and eventually (and hopefully) resolved. But this static, ticket-heavy model can’t keep up with the pace of business today. Employees expect seamless, self-service experiences.

AI adoption is accelerating across nearly every industry. According to McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report, 78% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from just 55% the year prior. From real-time analytics to generative tools and process automation, AI is becoming a fundamental part of how modern businesses operate and compete.

Here comes a profoundly belated blog post on a behavior change. Better late than never. Due to various bugs with the glob engine on Windows, we decided to rewrite it in CFEngine 3.24.0. Not only does the new glob engine resolve these bugs on Windows, but it also adds support for brace expansion on all platforms. E.g. findfiles.cf command output.

Automation has always stirred up fears of job loss. For IT professionals, the conversation has only grown louder with the rise of AI. But the truth is that the future of IT is not about replacement—it’s about reinvention. For decades, IT has been defined by its firefighting: manually resolving tickets, managing endless alerts, and fielding repetitive service requests. These tasks are ripe for automation, but automation doesn’t eliminate the need for IT talent.

When looking at the broad landscape of IT automation tools, you’ll find dozens (if not hundreds) of tools that seem like viable solutions to your automation needs. Almost all of those tools can be broken down into two categories: Open source automation tools and commercial automation tools. (Open source automation tools with a commercial offering are still considered open source, even if the commercial edition has a price tag.)