COMPOSER
Improves IT agility by automating the entire business process life cycle — including initial provisioning, configuration, validation, as well as monitoring and auto-remediation with event-driven automation.
Improve IT Agility
Improves business agility through the consolidation of various automation tools and processes from other IT domains for true end-to-end IT business workflow automation.
Consolidate Tooling
Allows organizations to implement automation at their own pace with turnkey, customizable, or do - it - yourself cross - domain workflow automation with a visually directive workflow designer, all supported in multivendor environments.
Automate Your Way
Leverages the power of Agile and DevOps methodologies, popular open source technologies that embrace industry best practices and a thriving technical community for collaboration and innovation
Leverage DevOps Methodologies
Overview Highlights
Product Definition
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Composer by Orchestral is an event-driven workflow automation platform that leverages the powerful and widely used StackStorm open source project.
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It is designed to build workflow automation across IT infrastructure silos and enables error free, cross-domain orchestration for improved IT and business agility.
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As an enterprise-grade workflow automation and orchestration platform Composer features an intuitive drag-and-drop Workflow Design Studio, a design canvas to create complex cross-domain process workflows of arbitrarily high complexity.
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Proven to reduce mean time to resolution from days to minutes, Composer extends beyond automation with a vast list of integrations across diverse IT and non-IT domains.
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Additionally, Composer features LDAP and RBAC security, as well as a web-based Admin Ul for managing Composer components.
Figure 1 – Overview of Composer Architecture by Orchestral.ai
Workflow-Centric Automation & Orchestration
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To enable automation and orchestration across technology domains, organizations must think in terms of workflows.
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A workflow is a series of tasks performed by personnel in different departments and executed in a sequential or semi-sequential manner either manually or through singular automation solutions to accomplish a business outcome.
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Workflows are a proven mechanism for converting manual operations and business rules into IT services deliverable at scale.
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Workflows can be single domain automation such as provisioning a set of target systems, such as servers, storage arrays or network devices, or workflows can span multiple domains and involve IT Service Management systems (ITSM).
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Workflows can also be event driven where an event in the IT environment triggers a workflow to be executed to mitigate the event.
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Composer's components and architecture accomplish this cross-domain integration automation & orchestration using customizable sensors and actions (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 – Architecture of Composer by Orchestral.ai
Sensors
Sensors are inbound integration points that watch for specific events that are either internal to the platform or external entities such as data analytic engines or monitoring systems. When an event occurs, the sensor triggers the corresponding workflow based on rules. Rules also provide the ability to tie cross domain workflows together. For example, when a new server is plugged into the network, a sensor detects that event and then triggers the “Configure Server Node” workflow. Or, when a compute platform sensor detects storage capacity shrinking below thresholds, it triggers a remediation workflow to archive log files. Additionally, this sensor can trigger an OmniCommunication channel such as Slack, Microsoft Teams or a Jabber message to notify the user of the condition and that the condition has been remediated.
Actions
Actions are outbound integration points that request changes to target systems. Actions are invoked either by users via the Composer Admin Ul, a Command Line Interface (CLI), a communication channel window, or by workflows. For example, when a “Configure Server Node” workflow is run, it utilizes several RESTful APIs, NETCONF Protocol to configure network devices and if necessary executes a CLI through a secure shell connection.
The Sensors and Actions are tied together into a cohesive Monitor, Analyze, Plan and Execute (MAPE) loop by the message BUS that provides a Distributed Communications Platform between the several integrations that Composer hosts to ensure real time communication between the workflow elements and its sensors and actions. With this unique, open, and customizable approach, workflows can respond to events and execute actions in a programmatic way on virtually on any element of the cross domain platform, or application.
An Efficient and Intuitive Workflow Designer
Composer provides a visually descriptive language to design your own workflows. Utilizing an intuitive drag and drop workflow ui, Composer aims to make the transition to automated workflows as simple as possible. Turnkey workflows ease the transition to automation by automating frequently performed tasks, such as infrastructure provisioning and deprovisioning, patch management across distributed environments or providing real time alerts on events occuring in the IT environment. Do-it-yourself workflows are created by organizations and executed through Composer to meet unique customer requirements, such as automating multivendor equipment or other technologies.
Figure 3 – Composer Workflow User Interface
Open at All Levels
Composer is open at all levels, enabling customization to meet unique requirements and to foster innovation and collaboration across the different departments of an organization. The flexibility of the Composer platform enables and accelerates digital transformation initiatives, as shown in Figure 4. At the top of the Composer architecture are workflows that are customizable to each department while also being flexible to span multiple departments. Next, the User Interface layer allows organizations to interact and manage Composer however they would like, whether that be managing the actual workflows through our Designer UI, via our CLI, or interacting with the UI via ChatOps. The Composable Services layer lists examples of the microservices-based framework that is at the heart of Composer. Each service is either accessible via open APIs or open sourced for greater extensibility. Finally, the Sensors and Actions layer represents the points of integration needed to enable cross-domain workflow automation. This highly extensible architecture allows the Composer automation platform to integrate with virtually any IT technology or platform.
Figure 4 – Composer Open At All Levels
Composer ZTS reduces mean time to respond (MTTR) down to minutes, eliminates phone calls, wait times and complex data gathering.
Vendor Agnostic
Data auto collection ensures relevant debugging data is collected and published to ensure quick turnaround and incident resolution.
Robust Integrations
Automate and orchestrate across infrastructure technology domains whether it be network, server, storage, security, cloud or computing.
Cross-Domain
API to integrate Composer with 3rd-party systems and custom applications such as self-service user portals or ITSM systems.
Open API
A flexible event-driven and highly extensible architecture ensures the broadest scope of use cases across the most complex infrastructure.
Highly Customizable
Powered by the open source StackStorm project, Composer delivers the enterprise grade hardening for large-scale production deployments.
Open Source Supported
Scalable for any use case imaginable.
Highly Scalable
DIY workflows ranging from chat notification to complex automated server provisioning.
DIY Workflows
Key Advantages
Getting Started
Orchestral's solutions are available as free 30-day Proof of Value evaluations. To get started, just click the "FREE TRIAL" button at the top of this page and complete the Trial Request Form. If you'd like to see a demo first, just click the "Book a Demo" button below to book a date/time that works best for you. Otherwise, you can get started by emailing us at info@orchestral.ai.