Here’s why I’m excited about the improvements and new features in our latest release, IAP 23.2.
Thinking back to when I was a network engineer, in ye olde days of “boxes” (aka routers and switches), and comparing it to the experience a network engineer can have working with Itential, it’s a better life: automation, Golden Configuration, integrations with all the API-enabled systems you need to work with in today’s environments. And now, with Projects, Automation Marketplace, and some key enhancements to the Workflow Canvas, we’re delivering the best experience for network engineers yet.
When you think about automation, it’s natural to first think about what you need to automate, and the tools necessary for automating that ‘box.’
I need to automate a router from vendor X, or IPAM Y, or ticket system Z, and I’ll use Ansible, or Python, or a controller.
But as the practice of automation matures, we’re seeing teams form around different automation expertise. There have been more efforts to organize, consolidate, and maximize automation assets — including movement toward more modularity, reusability, version control, and secure sharing. All of these evolutions are focused on one thing: helping automation teams work more efficiently, so they can build automations and leverage them together in a coordinated, orchestrated manner.
That’s what this release is focused on. We’re delivering the industry’s best network engineer experience, maximizing capability, speed, and ease of use to enable faster automation and orchestration. Here’s how.
Projects: Bringing Collaboration & GitOps to Network Engineering
Using a Project to organize and share automation assets means team members can focus on building different assets that can be leveraged together. It lets people focus their upskilling efforts by going deep instead of wide—without compromising overall efficiency.
Let’s say one engineer has experience with workflow logic, either in Itential or even in other platforms. They can focus on building the workflows. Another engineer, who maybe has less direct experience with automation or code, can focus on building JSON forms for these workflows to present them to users for input collection. And a third engineer can focus on building Data Transformations: UI-driven JSON Schema transformations that enable easy flow of data between API calls despite format discrepancies.
Along with this enhanced collaboration on the ground level, Projects also simplify sharing and cross-collaboration at scale. Managing access to a Project is simplified: you can enable members to edit assets, just to run jobs without editing, or just to view the Project. In addition, Projects can be exported to a Git repository as a single file and managed using version control tools to ensure consistency across different Itential instances in different teams.
Projects are our latest way of bringing NetOps into greater alignment with the software development lifecycle. Enabling faster collaboration, easier version control, and applying GitOps to NetOps helps network teams support the needs of developers and the business overall.
Projects are simple and practical, enabling fast, efficient collaboration and powerful sharing capabilities as automation efforts scale up.
Introducing Automation Marketplace
The new Automation Marketplace is a place for Itential users at any company to go and download free resources built by Itential engineers, our customers, and our partners. Assets like integrations to external platforms and data transformations to facilitate workflow orchestration are really important, and while these can be built in Itential fairly easily, it’s always useful to move as quickly as possible. If something already exists, why not use it.
Marketplace is about more than helping teams move a little faster, though. Maybe even more important is its role in establishing and proliferating best practices. Workflows, integrations, and data transformations that are available in the Marketplace help teams work with confidence. They can also be used as examples for teams learning how to build their own assets in Itential, and many of the workflows can easily be modified to fit an organization’s specific process and systems.
I’m excited about Automation Marketplace because network automation is about using the right tool for the right job. Bringing together an ecosystem of technology that supports this approach can help teams move faster.
I’m excited about Automation Marketplace because network automation is about using the right tool for the right job. Bringing together an ecosystem of technology that supports this approach can help teams move faster.
In recent years, we’ve already seen an increase in the number of vendors that offer published APIs that follow OpenAPI standards. And this is the foundation for the Marketplace ecosystem. As more and more vendors go this route, it’s going to become even easier to automate and orchestrate. So by introducing Automation Marketplace, we’re aiming to enable all our customers to participate in this API-driven ecosystem, driving best practices in the industry, which in turn encourages more vendors to publish APIs, which makes Marketplace more useful, and you get a snowball effect where everybody wins.
IAP 23.2 Workflow Canvas Enhancements
Alongside Projects and Automation Marketplace, we’re introducing some key quality-of-life improvements that will make network engineers’ lives easier using Itential.
Workflows that orchestrate processes end-to-end can grow quite large. As new team members start working on workflows, let’s say in the middle of an in-flight project, they need to be able to quickly understand how everything works and find assets in order to continue building onto these workflows. New features such as a Canvas Search, a Reference View, and Asset Filtering help network engineers quickly understand the flow and relationship between tasks in large workflows so things can keep moving.
These are the kinds of features that become really important at scale. When teams use Itential across multiple use cases, integrating instantly to any API-enabled system or platform, their palette of integrations and workflow tasks will grow and grow. Teams need ways to quickly search and filter the drag-and-drop assets they need for a given purpose, especially as automation efforts continue to expand.
IAP 23.2: Efficiency at Scale
Efficient network automation doesn’t stop at automating implementations. It doesn’t stop at automating discrete, domain-specific tasks. The goal should be to produce outcomes more quickly, turning the network into a driver of innovation and business agility. To get there, automation teams must be able to work together efficiently at scale to automate and orchestrate processes.
Projects, Marketplace, and improvements to the Workflow Canvas are features that are always useful, but they really start to show their value at scale. Organizations might start with just one or two automation engineers, but over time, teams will form, expertise will spread, and leadership will put a greater priority on automation. How teams work together is just as important as what they choose to automate.
IAP 23.2 makes automation more efficient by delivering a more streamlined, simplified, yet powerful set of capabilities for network engineers and other Itential users. Learn about all the new features and improvements here.
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.
