Using automation to enhance security and increase IT NPS to 90+ at Nutanix

As Nutanix’s head of Cybersecurity, Sebastian was largely responsible for managing service requests, provisioning virtual machines (VMs), and monitoring security. He wanted to increase the efficiency of these processes and catch a higher rate of suspicious activity before it manifested into security threats.

The company had implemented ServiceNow to help manage service requests, but it wasn’t checked frequently enough—many requests sat in queues for extended periods of time.

Provisioning VMs efficiently was no easy feat, either. Developers would submit a request and wait a week for someone to manually provision the VM, resulting in lost productivity. Frustrated with the wait, one Nutanix team even set out to build their own VMs, but the process wasn’t scalable.

And, as with any high-tech company, security was always top-of-mind. Sebastian wanted to decentralize information and give employees the tools to identify potential issues and manage security, such as their laptop configuration, VPN usage, and login data.

To alleviate the bottlenecks in managing service requests, Sebastian used Workato to create and assign tickets from Slack with Workbot. Since employees were already spending all their time in Slack, Sebastian wanted to meet users “on their turf” and eliminate the need for specialized tools.

Now, Sebastian and his team can do all of their work directly from Slack since it connects to multiple apps. This accelerates all kinds of workflows—assignment, escalation, approval, creation, or update of any ticket—and helps better prioritize the work that needs to get done.

Workato also allows for automatic provisioning and deprovisioning of VMs, which has reduced costs and maximized VM utilization. And with automated alerts and responses, Nutanix can keep a better pulse on suspicious activity that could lead to security risks.

By creating and assigning tickets in Slack, Sebastian has streamlined their employee experience, resulting in 100% SLA. Since Nutanix employees don’t have to leave Slack to submit or respond to a service request, the process has also maximized employee productivity and resulted in faster response times.

With the instant provisioning of VMs, developers see a reduced IT provisioning time from weeks to hours for each request. Instead of carefully monitoring VMs, the IT team is now able to work on more value-added initiatives.

As a whole, Sebastian can more closely oversee the business with Workato automations, which readily surface any potential threats so that Nutanix can react faster and more intelligently. Looking ahead, Sebastian envisions a future where his team can integrate other enterprise apps, such as ServiceNow and Jira, to increase automation-driven productivity gains.

Through these initiatives, automation has become second nature at Nutanix. Within a year of adopting automations based in Machine Learning and other tools, Nutanix saw an increase in its IT service capacity by 30%. Additionally, the IT team’s NPS score has held steady at 90+ for the last 18+ months, proof that automation has positively impacted the employee experience.