Is Your Automation Being Crushed by Cloned Processes?

It sounds like something out of a ‘50’s B-movie, but your business could be in danger of being crushed by clones – cloned variants of existing processes that are nearly identical. A simple task like backing up servers can lead to tens of thousands of nearly-identical cloned processes — one for each server — getting in the way and costing you money.

How does this happen? Many automation tools require a separate job definition for each variant of a process, no matter how trivial. So to back up Server B, the easiest way to do it is to clone the existing process for Server A and then make whatever minor change is needed for Server B. Congratulations! You made a clone!

This simple action of creating a cloned variant of an existing process can lead to an ever-increasing spiral of unique jobs that gets in the way of navigating and managing your day-to-day operations. Before long, it isn’t even clear which of them need to exist and which are leftover copies-of-copies.

Cloned jobs means cloned costs

Some automation platforms bill based on the number of job definitions, regardless of whether they’re run. So on top of the clutter, all those cloned jobs create ever-increasing costs.

Don’t draw the short straw when there is a change to how these processes work! Somebody is going to have to go through and update all those cloned job definitions – a tedious manual process, made even harder by the fact that distinguishing the minor differences between multiple cloned jobs or deciphering which jobs are safe to be deleted can be impossible.

Or instead of changing the process, you could create yet another new process definition. The cycle continues, the clones multiply and your costs increase.

Sweep away cloned jobs with RunMyJobs®

RunMyJobs builds processes from reusable automation components, meaning you can sweep away those thousands of cloned job definitions — forever. This makes it easy to update your processes enterprise-wide when any steps, schedules, credentials or data are changed.

All you have to do is update the shared object, like the process sequence or schedule. That change is then automatically applied everywhere it’s used. Instead of maintaining hundreds of processes, you really only need to manage one. By eliminating all the needless duplication and simplifying maintenance, you will never again have to fight your way through hundreds or thousands of cloned job definitions.

Even better, your automation costs stay under control. Even if you have more job definitions created than you need, you only pay for jobs that actually run.

Find out how RunMyJobs can eliminate duplication, ensure consistency and reduce errors.