How much has your network grown, expanded, and changed in the last 4 – 5 years? I’m sure your answer is some variant of quite a lot. Networks don’t grow in isolation. There’s normally a compelling factor and need that pushes networks to expand rapidly, and all of these changes have placed the need for network automation front and center. But with this spotlight, also comes a glaring focus on the challenges that network teams are facing while adopting automation.
We’ve gone well past the days of being able to store everything about the network in your head, and while a head full of powerful and arcane network knowledge is nice, it’s just not a scalable strategy. If automation has become a necessity to successfully manage your growing network, how do you help network teams build trust in an automation solution?
The answer to that very question was recently discussed on The Net Podcast as Itential’s VP of Product Management, Peter Sprygada, joined their crew to share some advice on how network teams can feel confident in automation.
Why Trust is Built, Not Given to Network Automation
Automation can be a vicious cycle for most network teams. They know they need automation, but don’t trust someone else to build that automation on their network for them. On the other hand, they also know they can’t write it themselves, so they need someone else to write it. But, they don’t trust anyone outside of the network team to write it. So, how network teams break that cycle so they can find an automation solution that they can trust? They need a way to build automations themselves.
Today’s network team will have a critical role in creating valuable automations because without their skill and expertise operating complex networks correctly, automations will never become effective enough to hit that high bar of confidence. Traditional automation tools like Python and Ansible have a steep learning curve for most networking teams who do not already have a background in writing code, which is why you need to find new methods of approaching network automation from the networker’s point of view. To overcome that skills gap, they need low-code methods that allow network teams to visually drag, drop, and define tasks to create automations themselves. They must be the ones implementing the correct logic and sequences that are appropriate and necessary for any form of network change the organization needs, and this is where those years of learning to operate networks comes into play. This is where the real value of network teams is best applied.
By giving network practitioners the ability to express this knowledge in their own automations, using their own tools, they will be able to multiply efficiencies across their team, and ultimately, their organization. Overcoming the skills gap quickly can unlock the hidden potential that network teams have, and ultimately put them in a position to develop automations with the utmost level of trust.
The Bigger Picture of Network Automation
These new methods of creating network automations also help network teams understand and think more like developers as well. They will be challenged to take larger automations and think about them as smaller tasks that can be accomplished and linked together. It will also become apparent in this environment that many of these tasks can be reused as smaller workflows that can be called upon as needed, which means you can write it once and other team members can use those automations without recreating them again. This helps network teams to see the bigger picture of automation — how to extend network-focused automation by integrating with other systems, like the ITSM, IPAM, network monitoring, and probably a dozen more systems that network teams need to swivel-chair around every day. This kind of end-to-end automation can help automate the entire process from ticket creation to ticket closed successfully, and everything in between, giving them back more time so they can focus on other network projects.
Many network teams operate under the false premise that automation dumbs down networking and makes it less technical when in reality, automation helps make it easier to operate their network using software that requires a high degree of network engineering skill to create. And the best way for them to overcome that false premise is to show how they build these automations themselves. At Itential, we’ve engineered a low-code platform that drives rapid network automation adoption to help network teams build trust in their automations. You can learn more about the platform here or go ahead and give it a try for yourself by creating a free Itential account here.
To unpack more about building trust in your network automations and more, listen to the full Net Podcast with Itential’s Peter Sprygada. You’ll learn hear about the early days of network automation, where we are at today, and some solid advice for getting started on your automation journey.
Rich Martin
Director of Technical Marketing ‐ Itential
Rich Martin is the Director of Technical Marketing at Itential. Previously, Rich has worked at several networking vendors as a both a Pre-Sales Systems Engineer and Systems Engineering Manager but started his career with a background in software development and Linux. He has a passion for automation in the networking domain, and at Itential he helps networking teams to get started quickly and move forward successfully on their network automation journey.
