2023 is going to be a big year for network teams as automation moves from aspiration to necessity. With the new year officially underway, there’s a lot to consider to really bring your network automation strategy to the next level and take full advantage of the opportunity ahead.
Network teams need to adopt new methods and new solutions to deliver efficiency and security at the ever-increasing scale that organizations’ needs demand. Multi-cloud, hybrid environments, edge, and a barrage of new innovations sure to come are making networking more important than ever, and network automation and orchestration is the only approach that will empower organizations to keep pace.
We delivered big strides forward for a long list of customers in 2022, and we took that experience to put together a short rundown of five key topics to explore and understand to advance your network automation and orchestration strategy in 2023.
1. Scaling Automation for Success
With networks growing larger and more complex than ever, it’s key for organizations to achieve greater efficiency to enable true scalability. Past approaches to automation have left IT teams with a collection of disparate scripts and tools that automate at the task level, leaving a never-ending backlog of network change requests.
As multi-cloud and multi-domain ecosystems continue to grow, the backlog will grow alongside. That’s why a new approach is needed to automate at scale – an integrated, holistic solution that enables end-to-end automation across the entire organization.
Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Scaleable Enterprise Network Automation from Scripts to Self-Service
Packet Pushers Podcast: Get Scalable Network Automation with Itential
How to Turn Your Tribal Knowledge into Organization-Wide Automation
2. Debunking Network Source of Truth
Going into 2023, organizations are turning to a federated source of truth approach to manage network changes across their dispersed ecosystems. It’s clear looking ahead that to successfully enable this approach teams will need to adopt automation solutions that can orchestrate and integrate with any network domain, system, or service.
An automation strategy that can automate a network change from ticket creation to ticket resolution requires a federated approach that allows automations to access data from any source in real time, providing fresh, accurate information and ensuring network changes are always made correctly.
Itential + Netbox: Evolving from a Source of Truth to End-to-End Automation of Network Changes
Your Recipe for Automation Success: A Federated Source of Truth
NFD 27: How to Integrate a Federated Source of Truth for Network Automation with Itential
3. Conquering Change Management
With the exponential growth of change requests hitting network teams on a daily basis, it’s more important than ever to find ways to automate these changes. Otherwise, teams risk losing critical time needed to work on larger order projects and initiatives.
To execute with speed at scale, network teams need quick, reliable solutions to automate change management across your entire infrastructure – physical, virtual, and cloud. Any viable network automation solution for forward-looking organizations must be agile and adaptable, able to integrate across every domain and technology in your ecosystem and handle rising numbers of change requests efficiently and correctly.
How to Integrate ServiceNow as Steps in Your Network Automation Workflows
Why Simple Network Changes Aren’t That Simple
Why Integration, Transformation & Participation are Critical for Success
4. Advancing CI/CD for NetOps and Network Automation
We’ve seen a huge momentum in the intersection of network automation and CI/CD, and that will only continue to evolve in the new year. Continuing this shift for network teams through 2023 will help to achieve greater velocity and improve delivery as CI/CD addresses key challenges brought about by rising network complexity.
While CI/CD has transformed the software development process, networking teams need to approach implementation in a way that best suits their processes. Understanding the differences in how CI/CD practices apply to your network automation and orchestration initiatives will be crucial to your success.
Accelerate Network Automation & Orchestration Using CI/CD Principles
Exploring the Growth of CI/CD in Network Automation
How NetDevOps Teams Can Apply CI/CD Pipelines to the Network
5. Building a Network Automation Strategy
Sticking with the reactive, ad-hoc approach some organizations still employ today will cause automation efforts to quickly balloon in cost without delivering the value you need. By defining key automation use cases and selecting an automation platform that can orchestrate and integrate across your entire network ecosystem, organizations can see the full potential of their automation implementation.
Look to industry analysis and key innovators to understand how your organization can best develop a successful network automation strategy that meets business needs and to explore which platform will help you get there.
2022 Gartner Cool Vendors in Network Automation
EMA Report: The Current State of Network Automation & How to Get it Right
A New Approach to Developing an End-to-End Network Automation Strategy
Looking Ahead
Over the next year, the organizations that see the greatest gains in efficiency, scale, and security in their networks will be those that adopt the right strategies and tools. Equip yourself and your team with a sharper understanding of how the network automation landscape continues to evolve and learn what challenges you can leverage automation to solve. For more key insights and best practices, check out our series of on-demand webinars, read our latest blogs, or sign up to receive these straight to your inbox.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your automation and see how Itential can help you get there, test drive the Itential Automation Platform or schedule a custom demo with our experts.
Tyler Lochan
Technical Content Specialist ‐ Itential
Tyler Lochan is a Technical Content Specialist at Itential. Tyler is a Georgia Tech grad who began his career as a technology consultant in financial services. He has a passion for bringing his technical expertise together with writing, and he focuses on creating content to support our customers as they navigate their network automation journeys.
